Lauren Groff Receives the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
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Oakland, CA, April 19, 2022—Lauren Groff, award-winning author of Matrix (Riverhead) and six other audacious, mesmerizing books of fiction, has been chosen 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize recipient by the New Literary Project. The Prize annually honors a mid-career author of fiction who has earned a distinguished reputation and the widespread praise of readers and reviewers.
The Prize recognizes emerged and continually emerging fiction authors at the midpoint of a burgeoning career. Prize winners receive a $50,000 award to support current and future work. The winner of the 2022 Prize will be in brief residence at the University of California, Berkeley, during October 2022.
Lauren Groff was a three-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
“Lauren Groff is an audacious writer of tremendous range and depth: most recently, treating modern American marriage in her novel Fates and Furies, exploring contemporary paradoxes and mysteries through the continually surprising stories in Florida, and then fleshing out life in a protofeminist 12th Century French abbey in Matrix. Wherever her imagination leads, she writes with subtlety and force. For all that, there is an enthralling undercurrent of poetry in her prose, with sentences of beauty that reward careful attention. With wicked precision she eviscerates where called upon—she once said she “writes in opposition.” Even so, there is a longing to connect, a desire to fashion meaning in the torrent of our times, a sympathetic imagination always at play. “The truth does not always comfort,” she writes in one story, thereby testifying to a truth we have no choice but to live by.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“The Joyce Carol Oates Prize celebrates an extraordinary mid-career author, one who has emerged and is still emerging. That characterizes Lauren Groff perfectly. Mesmerizingly restless, she is 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 distinguished career she has made one radical departure after another. And for all that we gladly follow her anywhere. Because, finally, what tempers, what colors, what informs every magical sentence she composes is heartfelt compassion and integrity. Lauren Groff has taken awe-inspiring strides, and somehow, we feel confident she is only getting started—again.”
—Joseph Di Prisco, Chair
“I am delighted to see Lauren Groff’s exceptional career recognized by the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is not just one of the best writers working today; she is one of the most audacious and inspiring. There is no question of her enormous range, but across all her work there is a consistent energy, surprise, and emotional richness. In her unusual alertness to the relationship between the individual and the physical world, and between the contemporary and the historical, Lauren offers readers nothing less than a fresh view of humanity. I’m so pleased she will receive this richly deserved honor.”
—Sarah McGrath, Senior Vice President, Editor-in-Chief of Riverhead Books
“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 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 coming months.”
—Lauren Groff
Diane Del Signore, Executive Director, remarks: “Judges were deeply impressed by the finalists, all of whom will resonate with readers throughout their flourishing careers. We look forward to collaborating with Lauren and the Cal English Department for what we expect to be her successful Bay Area residency.”
The Joyce Carol Oates Prize is named for the eminent author, an honorary member of the New Literary Project’s (NewLit) board of directors. NewLit acknowledges her lifelong impact as a peerless teacher and writer, beloved for generations by students, writers, and readers around the world.
NewLit drives social change by unleashing artistic power to lift up a literate, democratic society. NewLit offers high-school age writers free workshops, led by Simpson Fellows from the Berkeley English Department. Five workshops are taking place at Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall, Girls Inc. of Alameda County, Cal Prep, and Northgate High School. Simpsonistas: Vol. 4, an internationally distributed anthology of Project-related artists, including Joyce Carol Oates, Prize Winners, and younger writers, appears in October 2022 (Rare Bird). NewLit also awards annual $5,000 Jack Hazard Summer Fellowships for creative writers who teach high school.
See previous Prize Winners here.
Join Lauren Groff and Joyce Carol Oates in a live virtual conversation on May 4th from 4 to 5:30 pm Pacific.
For more information, please contact:
Diane Del Signore, Executive Director
510-919-0970, diane@newliteraryproject.org
www.newliteraryproject.org
For media inquiries, please contact:
Scott Busby / The Busby Group
scott@thebusbygroup.com
310-600-7645