Longlist for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize Announced.
Brooklyn Public Library's (BPL) Literary Prize has for the past seven years recognized and celebrated writing that captures Brooklyn’s spirit in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
"This year's nominees are a love letter to New York in all its plurality and vibrance. The stories represented in our longlist books take us from 19th century Brooklyn to the disordered cosmos, to apartments in Bushwick and brownstones in Bed-Stuy," said Librarian Michelle Montalbano, co-coordinator of the Literary Prize committee.
"We spend time with trans women in Prospect Park, in the courtroom examining our broken legal system, and ask ourselves important questions about how we show up for our community, vibrate higher, live on purpose in the pursuit of transformative justice, and what the future could hold. By highlighting these exciting books from the past year and engaging more of our BPL colleagues in the process of selecting them than ever before, we hope to hold up a mirror to Brooklynites that truly reflects the diversity of their beloved borough," Montalbano explained.
The Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize was established in collaboration with the Brooklyn Eagles. The shortlist will be announced in early fall with winners selected in November.
"The Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize celebrates contemporary writers and their greatest allies: librarians," said Linda E. Johnson, President and CEO of Brooklyn Public Library, announcing the longlist. "This year, BPL librarians and library staff read across genre and a dazzling array of subjects from climate change to the cosmos. The longlist encourages readers to delve into our past and imagine a more equitable, more sustainable future."
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2021 LITERARY PRIZE LONGLISTS
Alphabetical by author last name
NONFICTION
How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community (Hachette Go)
By Mia Birdsong
Pedro’s Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land (Melville House)
By Marcos Gonsalez
We Do This ‘til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books)
By Mariame Kaba
Under A White Sky: The Nature of the Future (Crown, an imprint of Random House)
By Elizabeth Kolbert
Vibrate Higher: A Rap Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
By Talib Kweli
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type)
By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
By Jed S. Rakoff
Better, not Bitter: living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice (Grand Central Publishing)
By Yusef Salaam
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
By Sarah Schulman
Intimations: Six Essays (Penguin Books)
By Zadie Smith
New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time (Norton & Company)
By Craig Taylor
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House)
By Isabel Wilkerson
FICTION
The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press)
By Threa Almontaser
Black Buck (HMH Books)
By Mateo Askaripour
When No One is Watching (William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)
By Alyssa Cole
Love and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press)
By Alex Dimitrov
Un-American (Wesleyan University Press)
By Hafizah Geter
Libertie (Workman Publishing)
By Kaitlyn Greenidge
Luster (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
By Raven Leilani
We Are Watching Eliza Bright (Grand Central Publishing)
By A.E. Osworth
Detransition, Baby (Penguin Random House)
By Torrey Peters
100 Boyfriends (MCD x FSG Originals)
By Brontez Purnell
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (Tor)
By V.E. Schwab
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Simon & Schuster)
By Dawnie Walton