We're pleased to announce the finalists for the eighteenth annual Young Lions Fiction Award, honoring the works of five talented young authors. 

The finalists for 2018 Young Lions Fiction Award are:
 

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
A debut collection by a prize-winning writer explores the ties that bind people to each other and their homes as reflected in stories featuring generations of women haunted by the ghosts of war, a daughter who is outraged by the return of her believed-dead mother and a decimated refugee world where resolutions have unforeseen consequences.





 

Black Jesus and Other Superheroes by Venita Blackburn
Black Jesus and Other Superheroes chronicles ordinary people achieving vivid extrasensory perception while under extreme pain. The stories tumble into a universe of the jaded and the hopeful, in which men and women burdened with unwieldy and undesirable superhuman abilities are nonetheless resilient in subtle and startling ways. Venita Blackburn's characters hurl themselves toward the inevitable fates they might rather wish away. Their stories play with magic without the sparkle, glaring at the internal machinations of the human spirit. Fragile symbols for things such as race, sexuality, and love are lifted, decorated, and exposed to scrutiny and awe like so many ruins of our imagination. Through it all Blackburn's characters stumblealong currents of language both thoughtful and hilarious.

 

Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash
A coming-of-age story follows a troubled college wrestler in North Dakota who falls in love and becomes increasingly unhinged during his final season. Profane, manic, and tipping into the uncanny, it's a story of loneliness, obsession, and the drive to leave a mark.







 

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
A tale told from multiple perspectives traces the complicated relationship between Ann and Wade on a rugged landscape and how they came together in the aftermath of his first wife's imprisonment for a violent murder.

Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang
A collection of stories explores the hearts and inner lives of a group of adolescent girls from China and Taiwan who come of age and come to terms with their pasts in a New York City artist community.









Which book do you think should win? Join the conversation on social media using #NYPLYoungLions!

The winning writer will be awarded on June 7, 2018 at 7 PM during a ceremony held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Young Lions members are invited to attend the reception and ceremony. Learn more here.

About the Young Lions Fiction Award

Founded in 2001  by Ethan Hawke, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Rick Moody, and Hannah McFarland, the Young Lions Fiction Award is given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or a collection of short stories. Each year, five young fiction writers are selected as finalists by a reading committee of writers, editors, and librarians. A panel of award judges—which this year includes Carys Davies and 2017's winner Karan Mahajan—will select the winner of this year's $10,000 prize

Past winners of the Young Lions Fiction Award include: Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs; Amelia Gray, Gutshot; Molly Antopol, The UnAmericans; Paul Yoon, Snow Hunters; Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn; Karen Russell, Swamplandia; Adam Levin, The Instructions; Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged; Salvatore Scibona, The End; Ron Currie, Jr., God is Dead; Olga Grushin, The Dream Life of Sukhanov; Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation; Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli; Monique Truong, Book of Salt; Anthony Doerr, The Shell Collector; Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated; Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days; and Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves. 

The Award is made possible by an endowment created with generous gifts from Russell Abrams, Nina Collins, Hannah and Gavin McFarland, Ethan Hawke, Stephan Loewentheil, Rick Moody, Andrea Olshan and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.