The 2015 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award Winners have been announced!
As they do every year, the booksellers who make up the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program selection committee chose 45-60 books to introduce to readers across the country, representing the most exciting and accomplished new voices in fiction and nonfiction.
From their selections, two panels of distinguished authors first select a short list of finalists for the annual Discover Awards, and eventually chose a winner in both Fiction and Nonfiction. This year our judges are: Eleanor Brown, Ben Fountain, and Thrity Umrigar reading fiction, and Scott Anderson, Candice Millard, and Cheryl Strayed reading nonfiction.
Today, at a ceremony in Manhattan to celebrate the 25th year of Discover Great New Writers and all of the books and authors selected for the program, the first, second, and third-place winners in each category were announced:
First Place, Fiction: Mia Alvar, for In the Country: Stories
Second Place, Fiction: Angela Flournoy, for The Turner House
Third Place, Fiction: Sophie McManus, for The Unfortunates
First Place, Nonfiction: Jill Leovy, for Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
Second Place, Nonfiction: George Hodgman, for Bettyville
Third Place, Nonfiction: Amy Ellis Nutt, for Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family
The award comes with a $30,000 prize and a full year of promotion in Barnes & Noble stores for the first place winners in both Fiction and Nonfiction. Second place finalists each receive a $15,000 prize and third place finalists receive $7,500 each.
Free samples of each of the winners — and many other Discover selections — can be found courtesy of Barnes & Noble Readouts.
You can also find more in the Barnes & Noble Review with Mia Alvar and Angela Flournoy. Book recommendations from Sophie McManus. More from George Hodgman and a Q&A with Amy Ellis Nutt. And a terrific review of Ghettoside from The New York Times.
