the 2021 kirkus prizes By Michael Schaub Jonno Rattman
Joy Williams, Brian Broome, and Christina Soontornvat are the winners of this year’s Kirkus Prizes, given annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature. The winners of the awards were announced at an online ceremony livestreamed on YouTube from the Austin Central Library in Texas and hosted by Kirkus Media CEO Meg LaBorde Kuehn on Oct. 28.
Meg LaBorde Kuehn
Williams won the fiction prize for Harrow, her first novel in more than 20 years, about a teenage girl living with a group of people after a mysterious ecological disaster. The judges praised “Williams’ unapologetic rebuke to the aspirations of the boomer generation, all the more lacerating for its mordant wit and avoidance of dewy-eyed uplift.” The judges for this year’s fiction award were bestselling author Rumaan Alam; critic Elsbeth Lindner; bookseller Ikwo Ntekim; and Laurie Muchnick, fiction editor at Kirkus Reviews. Deborah Garrison, Williams’ editor at Knopf, accepted the award on Williams’ behalf and read a statement from the author: “The readers and judges of Kirkus, by commending and honoring its heart and howl, have given 4
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1 december 2021
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the 2021 kirkus prizes
Joy Williams
Harrow further presence.” Williams has previously been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Broome was named the winner in the nonfiction category for Punch Me Up to the Gods, his memoir about growing up Black and gay in Ohio. The judges called Broome’s book a “powerfully vulnerable and bleakly funny memoir” and said they were “dazzled by the book’s unique structure, framed by Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem ‘We Real Cool’ and by its selflacerating but ultimately hopeful insights.” “Ohhhh crap! Are you kidding me? Wow!” exclaimed Broome, visibly stunned by the news. “It is so gratifying for somebody like me |
kirkus.com
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