Longwood University is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2024 John Dos Passos Prize, the oldest literary award given by a Virginia college or university, which honors one of America’s most talented but underappreciated writers. This year’s list of finalists includes three Guggenheim fellows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and a Shirley Jackson Award winner.
The John Dos Passos Prize jury selected five finalists—all celebrated novelists and storytellers whose published works defy literary conventions and experiment with form. Their exceptional works are taught in college classrooms across the country.
The 2024 finalists with selected works are:
- Luis Alberto Urrea: Good Night, Irene: A Novel (2023); The House of Broken Angels (2018); The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005)
- Victor Lavalle: Lone Women (2023); The Changeling (2017); Slapboxing With Jesus (1999)
- Angie Cruz: How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (2022); Dominicana (2019); Let it Rain Coffee (2006)
- Peter Rock: Passersthrough (2022); My Abandonment (2009); This is the Place (1997)
- Carter Sickels: The Prettiest Star (2020); The Evening Hour (2012)
Launched in 1980, the prize is given annually by Longwood University to an underappreciated writer whose work offers incisive, original commentary on American themes. The winner of the prize receives an honorarium and will give a reading on Longwood’s campus in the spring of 2025.
“The five authors selected as finalists for this year’s Dos Passos Prize represent the wide range of possibilities in American fiction,” said Dr. David Magill, professor of literatures of diversity and chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at Longwood.“Experimental narrative styles, challenging characters and lyrical prose mark all our writers, but each brings their own unique sense of language and vision to examine the United States in wonderful detail.”
The 2024 Dos Passos Prize selection jury comprises last year’s winner, novelist Patricia Engel; Dr. Eric Waggoner, executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council; and Magill, who serves as chair of the jury. The committee looks for works that explore specifically American themes, experiment and encompass a range of human experiences.
Some of the previous recipients of the Dos Passos Prize have gone on to win prestigious literary awards, including Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. The list of previous recipients includes Shelby Foote (1998), Earnest J. Gaines (1993), Maxine Hong Kingston (1998), Colson Whitehead (2012), Ruth Ozeki (2014), Paul Beatty (2015), Karen Tei Yamashita (2018), Rabih Alameddine (2019) and Monique Truong (2021).
The winner will be announced in December.
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