The William Saroyan International Prize for Writing is a biennial literary award for fiction and nonfiction in the spirit of William Saroyan by emerging writers. It was established by Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation to "encourage new or emerging writers rather than recognize established literary figures;" [1] the prize being $12,500.
The Saroyan Prize was first awarded in 2003 for "newly published works of fiction including novels, short stories, dramas or memoirs." [1] Starting with the second round of awards in 2005, separate awards have been given for fiction and nonfiction. With the exception of a three year gap between the second and third rounds of awards, the prize has been awarded every two years since it was established.
Elizabeth Grace Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Julie Orringer is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor. She attended Cornell University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She was born in Miami, Florida and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband, fellow writer Ryan Harty. She is the author of The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestseller, and How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; her novel, The Flight Portfolio, tells the story of Varian Fry, the New York journalist who went to Marseille in 1940 to save writers and artists blacklisted by the Gestapo. The novel inspired the forthcoming Netflix series Transatlantic.
Edward Docx is a British writer. His first novel, The Calligrapher, was published in 2003. He is an associate editor of New Statesman Magazine.
Lori Jakiela is an American author of memoirs and poetry.
Margo Lillian Jefferson is an American writer and academic.
Rivka Galchen is a Canadian-American writer. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in 2008 and was awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She is the author of five books and a contributor of journalism and essays to The New Yorker magazine.
Kapka Kassabova is a poet and writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction. Her mother tongue is Bulgarian, but she writes in English.
The Calligrapher is the debut novel of Edward Docx, published in 2003. It was selected by Matt Thorn as his Summer fiction choice in The Independent and by both San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury as a 'Best Book of the Year'. It was also a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. As of 2012 it had been translated into eight languages.
Peter Selgin is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, editor, and illustrator. Selgin is Associate Professor of English at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Margalit Fox is an American writer. She began her career in publishing in the 1980s, before switching to journalism in the 1990s. She joined the obituary department of The New York Times in 2004, and authored over 1,400 obituaries before her retirement from the staff of the paper in 2018. Fox has written several non-fiction books.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey is the author of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating which won the 2010 John Burroughs Medal, the Natural History Literature category of the 2010 National Outdoor Book Award, and the non-fiction category of the 2012 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. In the book she describes her observations of an individual land snail in the species Neohelix albolabris which lived in a terrarium next to her while she was confined to bed through Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a 2010 non-fiction book written by Elisabeth Tova Bailey.
Solacers is a 2012 memoir written by Iranian-American author Arion Golmakani. The book is a first-person narrative about an abandoned boy growing up on the streets in 1960s Iran, before the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Daniel James Brown is an American author of narrative nonfiction books.
Pamela Erens is an American writer who appeared on a list compiled by the Reader's Digest of "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now". She has written three critically acclaimed novels for adults, a highly praised novel for middle schoolers, and the memoir/critical hybrid Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life. Her debut novel, The Understory (2007), was a fiction finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,. Erens's second novel, The Virgins (2013), received accolades from many sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. It was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her third novel, Eleven Hours, was published in May 2016. It was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New Yorker, NPR, and Kirkus. Erens's middle grade novel, Matasha, was published in June 2021. Erens has also written essays and critical articles for publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
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.
Jasmin Darznik is the author of three books, The Bohemians, Song of a Captive Bird, a novel inspired by the life of Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran's notorious woman poet, and The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life, which became a New York Times bestseller. A New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice" and a Los Angeles Times bestseller, Song of a Captive Bird was praised by The New York Times as a "complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people; a reminder of the power and purpose of art; and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out." The Bohemians was selected by Oprah Daily as one of the best historical novels of 2021. Darznik's books have been published in seventeen countries.
Edward Wilson-Lee is an English literature academic at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, and a specialist in the literature and the history of the book in the early modern period.
Hernan Diaz is a writer. His 2017 novel In the Distance was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also received a Whiting Award.
Nancy Agabian is an American writer, activist, and teacher, currently lecturing at New York University, Gallatin. She is of Armenian origin, and her memoir about her childhood, Me as Her Again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, won Lambda Literary's Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction.