A First For the National Book Awards

For the first time, the National Book Awards" "5 Under 35" picks are all women!  Read about them and their work here. The 5 Under 35 program, now in its eighth year, honors five young fiction writers selected by past National Book Award Winners and Finalists.  Congratulations to Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans; NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names; Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist; Daisy Hildyard, Hunters in the Snow; and Merritt Tierce, Love Me Back.

Some highlights about this quintet, announced Sept. 12:

-- The group includes two Stegner fellows— Molly Antopol is a former fellow who now teaches at Stanford and NoViolet Bulawayo is a current fellow.

-- Molly Antopol’s story collection, The UnAmericans, is largely based on her family’s involvement in the Communist Party.

--  NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing and her novel, We Need New Names, is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

-- Daisy Hildyard is pursuing a doctorate on scientific language at the University of London.

--  Amanda Coplin won the 2012 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for The Orchardist, for which she drew from her experience growing up in Eastern Washington.

-- Merritt Tierce received a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her first published story was selected for inclusion in the 2008 edition of New Stories from the South by ZZ Packer, an inaugural 5 Under 35 author in 2006. She is also executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, a reproductive rights nonprofit for low-income women.

Past 5 Under 35 writers include Danielle Evans, Keith Gessen, Amity Gaige, Nam Le, Dinaw Mengestu, Téa Obreht, Karen Russell, Justin Torres, Claire Vaye Watkins, John Corey Whaley, Tiphanie Yanique, Paul Yoon, and Charles Yu.