EXCLUSIVE: 'Nickel Boys,' 'Other Americans' Among Nominees For Aspen Words Prize

Take a quick scan of the 16 nominees for next year's Aspen Words Literary Prize, and you're likely to find that their dust jackets boast the stuff of international headlines. And that's the point: The annual award, which revealed its longlist Thursday, is intended to honor fiction that doesn't shy from the weightiest, thorniest of social issues today.

(You can jump to the full list by heading to Aspen's website or clicking here.)

"Fiction can help bridge divides across political, racial and socioeconomic lines," says Adrienne Brodeur, executive director of Aspen Words, the nonprofit literary organization that hands out the prize in partnership with NPR.

"This year's longlist includes titles that grapple with many of our biggest contemporary challenges — racial injustice, family separation and immigration, opioid addiction," she adds in a statement shared with NPR. "But they are also stories of triumph and hope — a reckoning with colonial history, a reclamation of the American Dream, a reflection of human resiliency and a celebration of so many voices left out of conventional literature."

A selection committee whittled the nominees for the $35,000 prize from 163 possible books. From here, a five-person jury will narrow the list to just five finalists, to be announced on Feb. 19, 2020, and will decide on a winner whose name will be revealed at a ceremony in New York City on April 16.

The winner of the third annual Aspen Words Literary Prize will join Tayari Jones, whose novel An American Marriage won the 2019 award, and Mohsin Hamid, whose Exit West won in 2018.

Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist

• Opioid, Indiana
  Brian Allen Carr
• Your House Will Pay
  Steph Cha

• Dominicana
  Angie Cruz
• Patsy
  Nicole Dennis-Benn

• Sabrina & Corina: Stories
  Kali Fajardo-Anstine
• The Other Americans
  Laila Lalami

• The Beekeeper of Aleppo
  Christy Lefteri
• Lost Children Archive
  Valeria Luiselli
• The Beadworkers: Stories
  Beth Piatote
• The Affairs of the Falcóns
  Melissa Rivero
• We Cast a Shadow
  Maurice Carlos Ruffin

• The World Doesn't Require You: Stories
  Rion Amilcar Scott

• On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
  Ocean Vuong

• Lot: Stories
  Bryan Washington

• The Nickel Boys
  Colson Whitehead

• Red at the Bone
  Jacqueline Woodson

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