Career
In 2008, De La Pava self-published his first novel, A Naked Singularity through XLibris. [4] In October 2010, literary site The Quarterly Conversation ran a review by Scott Bryan Wilson that called the book "one of the best and most original novels of the decade" and "a towering, impressive work." [5] That review caught the eye of staff at The University of Chicago Press, who signed the book up and published it in paperback in April 2012. The book was named one of the ten best works of fiction of 2012 by The Wall Street Journal . [6] In the Chicago Tribune, Julia Keller wrote, "A Naked Singularity is not about physics. It's about the American criminal justice system in a large and chaotic city, a place slowly crushed by hopelessness in the same way that an ancient star is gradually crushed by gravity. . . . It is about a city that teeters on the edge of total collapse and complete disaster, but that has the capacity to right itself (whew!) at the last possible second." [1] A Naked Singularity went on to win the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize from PEN as the best debut novel of that year. [7] On February 10, 2014, it was named one of eight books on the shortlist for the inaugural Folio Prize for the best book published in the United Kingdom in 2013. [8]
In April 2011, De La Pava self-published his second novel, Personae. The University of Chicago Press published a new paperback edition of that book in September 2013. In the Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks wrote, "[I]n this willfully cryptic book, Mr. De La Pava's sense of moral urgency is ever-present. In only his early 40s, he is already a writer of mercurial brilliance, and even his strangest detours are worth following", [9] and Bookforum called it " the most galvanizing meditation on the possibilities and ramifications of artistic process that I have read in recent memory." [10]
Donald Richard "Don" DeLillo is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, the complexities of language, art, the advent of the Digital Age, mathematics, politics, economics, and sports.
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
Manil Suri is an Indian-American mathematician and writer of a trilogy of novels all named for Hindu gods. His first novel, The Death of Vishnu (2001), which was long-listed for the 2001 Booker Prize, short-listed for the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize that year. Since then, he has published two more novels, The Age of Shiva (2008) and The City of Devi (2013), completing the trilogy.
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, "American Psyche", to The Guardian's weekend magazine between 2006 and 2008.
Alan Kent Haruf was an American novelist.
Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.
Hisham Matar is an American born British-Libyan writer. His memoir of the search for his father, The Return, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. His debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Matar's essays have appeared in the Asharq al-Awsat, The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and The New York Times. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published to wide acclaim on 3 March 2011. He lives and writes in London.
Akhil Sharma is an Indian-American author and professor of creative writing. His first published novel An Obedient Father won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His second, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary Award.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. Her short story collection Wednesday's Child was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
Andrés Neuman is an Argentine writer, poet, translator, columnist and blogger.
Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), and The Mars Room (2018).
Francis Spufford FRSL is an English author and teacher of writing whose career has seen him shift gradually from non-fiction to fiction. His first novel Golden Hill received critical acclaim and numerous prizes including the Costa Book Award for a first novel, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Paul Harding is an American musician and author, best known for his debut novel Tinkers (2009), which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2010 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, among other honors. He is currently the director of the Creative Writing and Literature MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, as well as Interim Associate Provost of Stony Brook University's Lichtenstein Center.
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.
TheWriters' Prize, previously known as the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Folio Prize and The Literature Prize, is a literary award that was sponsored by the London-based publisher The Folio Society for its first two years, 2014–2015. Starting in 2017, the sponsor was Rathbone Investment Management. At the 2023 award ceremony, it was announced that the prize was looking for new sponsorship as Rathbones would be ending their support. In November 2023, having failed to secure a replacement sponsor, the award's governing body announced its rebrand as The Writers' Prize.
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written four full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. A House for Alice was published in 2023.
A Naked Singularity is a legal thriller and the debut novel of American author Sergio De La Pava. Originally self-published in 2008 through XLibris, it was commercially re-published in 2012 and subsequently won the PEN Prize for Debut Fiction in 2013.
Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
