2022 Recipient: Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff is the author of six books of fiction, the most recent being the novel Matrix (2021). Her work has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, and France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, was a three time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and twice for the Kirkus Prize, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Prize, the Southern Book Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Prize. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Watch the Meet the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner Event.

Read the 2022 Prize Announcement press release.

I am moved and elated to have been awarded this year's Joyce Carol Oates Prize by the New Literary Project, an honor made doubly profound in my great admiration of the work of my fellow finalists, Christopher Beha, Percival Everett, Katie Kitamura, and Jason Mott. My deepest gratitude to the New Literary Project, which stands for diversity and equity in the world of letters, to the Board of Directors, to the University of California, Berkeley, and to the brilliant Joyce Carol Oates for bestowing her name on such a wonderful gift of time and freedom to write. This award will, I hope, spur me to finish the last part of my triptych circling ideas of religion, women, climate change, and capitalism, allowing me the space to breathe, think, and slow myself down so that I can make a weirder and riskier and more difficult book than I otherwise may have been able to write under all of my usual pressures. We're emerging from a long spell of isolation and darkness; the prospect of the residency in my beloved Bay Area, when I will get to engage with the spectacular young writers at Cal and in the Simpson Workshops, is a flash from a lighthouse shining my way over the next few months.

Lauren Groff

The Joyce Carol Oates Prize intends to celebrate an extraordinary mid-career author, one who has emerged and is still emerging. That characterizes Lauren Groff perfectly. Productively and mesmerizingly restless, she is deeply rooted in the rough-and-tumble of contemporary life and high-flying both, an author of insatiable curiosity and energy. No wonder she seems continually self-interrogating, and at the same time strong enough to stand up against the pieties and conventionalities. She revels in risk. Throughout her extensive and distinguished career of work she has made one radical departure after another. We might be tempted to ask where exactly are we going, and are we there yet, but wait, where did we think we ever were in the first place? And for all that we give thanks and gladly follow her anywhere. Because, finally, what tempers, what colors, what informs seemingly every single magical sentence she composes is her profound heartfelt compassion and her integrity. Lauren Groff has taken awe-inspiring strides, and somehow we feel confident she is only getting started—again.

Joseph Di Prisco

Founding Chair, New Literary Project