Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author. He rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living with the Hells Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences. In 1970, he wrote an unconventional article titled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly, which further raised his profile as a countercultural figure. It also set him on the path to establishing his own subgenre of New Journalism that he called "Gonzo", a journalistic style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative.
Alice Ann Munro was a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work is said to have revolutionized the architecture of the short story, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time, and with integrated short fiction cycles.
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas.
David Gaub McCullough was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.
The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The institute is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It also has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, its original home.
Sophie Kerr was a prolific writer of the early 20th century whose stories about smart, ambitious women mirrored her own evolution from small-town girl to successful career woman. At a time when few women were financially self-sufficient, Kerr made her way from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to New York City, where she supported herself as a magazine editor and a writer of more than 500 short stories, 23 novels, several poems and a play that ran on Broadway.
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her licence ès lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.
Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is the co-founder and President of Narrative 4, an international empathy education nonprofit. He is also a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College, New York. He is known as an international writer who believes in the "democracy of storytelling." Among his numerous honors are the U.S National Book Award, the Dublin Literary Prize, several major European awards, and an Oscar nomination.
David John Chariandy is a Canadian writer and academic, presently working as a professor of English literature at Simon Fraser University. His 2017 novel Brother won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and Toronto Book Award.
The Donald Windham Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes are an American literary award which offers unrestricted grants in four categories, namely fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. Established at Yale University in 2011, the first prizes were presented in 2013. Administered by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the award recognizes English language writers from across the world. The mission of the award is to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. In 2017 the category of poetry was added and eight prizes have been awarded annually since then.
The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection is awarded by the PEN America "to exceptionally talented fiction writers whose debut work — a first novel or collection of short stories ... represent distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise." The winner is selected by a panel of PEN Members made up of three writers or editors. The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize was originally named the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. The prize awards the debut writer a cash award of US$25,000.
Aspen Summer Words (ASW) is a festival of words, stories and ideas held each June in Aspen, Colorado. It is the flagship program of Aspen Words, a literary arts non-profit and program of the Aspen Institute. Until 2015, Aspen Words was known as the Aspen Writers' Foundation.
Amina Gautier is an American writer and academic. She is the author of four short story collections, many individual stories, as well as works of literary criticism.
Jaquira Díaz is a Puerto Rican fiction writer, essayist, journalist, cultural critic, and professor. She is the author of Ordinary Girls, which received a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Finalist. She has written for The Atlantic, Time (magazine), The Best American Essays, Tin House, The Sun, The Fader, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Longreads, and other places. She was an editor at theKenyon Reviewand a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University's MFA program and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has taught creative writing at Colorado State University's MFA program, Randolph College's low-residency MFA program, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kenyon College. Díaz lives in New York with her spouse, British writer Lars Horn, and is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University.
Jennifer Croft is an American author, critic and translator who translates works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. With the author Olga Tokarczuk, she was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights. In 2020, she was awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her autofictional memoir Homesick.
Jamel Brinkley is an American writer. His debut story collection, A Lucky Man (2018), was the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award, The Story Prize, the John Leonard Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He currently teaches fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Abundance is a 2021 novel by Jakob Guanzon about wealth inequality and human worth. It was published by Greywolf Press and is Guanzon's first novel. It covers concepts including inherited medical debt, poverty, food security, criminal justice system, and illegal drug trade. In 2021, the novel was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Things We Lost to the Water is the 2021 debut novel by American author Eric Nguyen.
The Aspen Words Literary Prize, established in 2018, is an annual literary award presented by Aspen Words, a literary center in Aspen, Colorado. The prize is presented to an author for "an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.” Winners receive a $35,000 prize.
Aaliyah Bilal is an American writer. She is best known for her debut collection of short stories, Temple Folk, which tells of the lives of Black Muslims living in America in the 1970s, including their participation and interaction with The Nation of Islam. The book was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She also received the 2024 Whiting Award. She was subsequently named one of the 10 Whiting Prize recipients for 2024. In May 2024, it was announced the book received the 17th annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
