2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Finalists Announced
OAKLAND, CA, March 10, 2021—The four Finalists for the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, an award that honors a distinguished mid-career author of fiction sponsored by the Simpson Literary Project, were announced today in a private ceremony. The $50,000 prize has been bestowed annually since 2017. The Finalists were selected by an anonymous jury from “emerged and still emerging” authors confidentially nominated by publishers, reviewers, agents, authors, and other representatives. Download the full press release.
The Finalists
Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections (Riverhead)
Jenny Offill, author of Weather (Knopf)
Darin Strauss, author of The Queen of Tuesday (Random House)
Lysley Tenorio, author of The Son of Good Fortune (Ecco)
Wouldn’t you like to meet the finalists? The authors will appear, alongside Joyce Carol Oates, in a live “Meet the Finalists” event on Tuesday, March 30th, 2021, 5:00pm PST and 8:00pm EST. The authors will each share stories tied to the theme “The Day I Realized” and then engage in a spirited panel discussion on a wide range of topics with Joyce Carol Oates herself. Join them, Simpson Literary Project staff, and supporters for a virtual celebration. This program is co-production with the Simpson Literary Project and House of SpeakEasy.
“All four finalists for the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize are spectacularly deserving, having justifiably earned the love and admiration and awe of devoted readers. The Simpson Literary Project invests in and supports stories and storytelling across a great social and generational spectrum. Where we celebrate stories and their makers, including especially those on our shortlist here, we affirm the best of our diverse communities and cultures and underscore our shared humanity.”
—Joseph Di Prisco, Chair
The Prize Recipient is expected to be named in late April 2021. Pandemic cooperating, the recipient will give public readings and make appearances in the Bay Area in 2021-2022 and participate in a brief residency in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, during the Spring Semester 2022. Finalists and Prize Winner contribute to Simpsonistas: Tales from the Simpson Literary Project Vol. 4, to be published in 2022.
The nonprofit Simpson Literary Project, established in 2016, is an innovative, evolving private/public partnership. It has survived the pandemic by being nimble—and thanks to the good graces of altruistic, generous individuals, foundations, and corporations. The Project fosters new literature, supports authors, and enhances the lives of readers, writers, educators, & students in diverse communities throughout California and the nation. The Project serves high-school age writers from Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall, Girls Inc. of Alameda County, and elsewhere through free workshops led by Simpson Fellows, creative writing teachers from the UC Berkeley English Department. First-time fledgling writers are published along with Prize Winners and Finalists and other distinguished authors in the annual, nationally distributed anthology Simpsonistas.
House of SpeakEasy connects authors and audiences in innovative and sustaining ways. Founded in 2013 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit by biographer and historian Amanda Foreman and editor Lucas Wittmann, SpeakEasy is dedicated to the idea that literature matters, and that the essence of literary culture is the relationship between writers and their readers. To foster that relationship, SpeakEasy seeks to: 1) bring authors out from behind the book, screen, and lectern into direct contact with audiences; 2) ensure that writers are compensated for their work and time and that their books are made available to educators and students; and 3) stimulate the audiences of tomorrow by exposing them to the best writing of today through innovative initiatives aimed at expanding access to authors and book culture. SpeakEasy provides literary programming and storytelling workshops for the general public, students, educators, and families in underserved communities and delivers literature and arts programming to "book deserts,” via The SpeakEasy Bookmobile.
The eminent Joyce Carol Oates, in 2018 and 2019 the Simpson Literary Project Writer-in-Residence at the Lafayette Library & Learning Center, is an honorary member of the Simpson Literary Project Board of Directors. Previous winners of the Prize are: T. Geronimo Johnson (2017), author of Welcome to Braggsville (HarperCollins); Anthony Marra (2018), author of The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth); Laila Lalami (2019), author of The Other Americans (Pantheon); and Daniel Mason (2020), author of A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (Little, Brown). Each continues their inspired engagements with the Simpson Literary Project.
For more information, please contact:
Diane Del Signore at 510.919.0970 / diane@newliteraryproject.org