Authors DW Gibson and Atticus Lish Win Inaugural Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize
The two winners of the Inaugural Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize were announced on Friday, October 23 at the Park Slope Library. The literary prize was presented for both a fiction and nonfiction category.
Preparation for the Next Life, Atticus Lish’s debut novel was selected as the winner of the fiction award. The nonfiction award went to The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the 21st Century by author and journalist DW Gibson.
The Brooklyn Eagles are made up of young professionals who work to connect the community to resources provided by the library. In addition, they serve as volunteers who work to raise funds for the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL).
According to the Brooklyn Eagles, “while the criteria for nominations was loosely defined, the nominated works were generally from authors who have lived in Brooklyn, portrayed the borough in prose or addressed themes relevant to its life and culture.”
Submissions were made by local bookstores, librarians, and artists. The BPL staff then selected three fiction and three nonfiction entries which were sent to a panel of accomplished writers and authors.
“Brooklyn Public Library is proud to have honored two exceptional works with the first-ever Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize,” said BPL President & CEO Linda E. Johnson. “We congratulate all of the nominees and extend our appreciation to the bookstores, library professionals, judges and sponsors who helped make the prize a success.”
“In choosing Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life for the inaugural Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize, the fiction committee celebrated the debut of a new and utterly original voice in American literature,” said Ashley Mihlebach, chair of the fiction committee.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times editor and nonfiction committee chair Charles Duhigg said that “DW Gibson’s The Edge Becomes the Center tells the story of gentrification from the perspective of the people who experience it most closely, and the result is a moving work of art that will resonate in Brooklyn and beyond.”
The other two nominees for the award for fiction were James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods and Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel by Anya Ulinich. For nonfiction, the nominees were Claire Prentice’s The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled off the Spectacle of the Century and Kent Russell’s I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised A Timid Son.