The Center for Fiction has revealed the seven finalists that made the short list for its annual $10,000 First Novel Prize.
The 2015 finalists are: After the Parade by Lori Ostlund (Scribner); Against the Country by Ben Metcalf (Random House); Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam (Penguin Books); The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Little, Brown); The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press); The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); and The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Each of the short-listed authors will receive a $1,000 award. Judges include: Tiphanie Yanique, Siri Hustvedt, Ann Packer, and Akhil Sharma, in addition to a representative from The Center for Fiction.
Here is more from the release: “The short-listed writers will read from their books on the evening of December 7th at the Center for Fiction and the 2015 winner will be announced on the evening of December 8th at The Center for Fiction’s Annual Dinner in New York City, where last year’s First Novel Prize winner, Tiphanie Yanique, will present the award.”
The organization will also honor Daniel Halpern, publisher and president of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers with the Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction at the awards ceremony.