Fall for the Book Announces the 2024 New American Voices Award Longlist

Immigrant experiences continually shape the United State’s evolving narrative. For this reason, Fall for the Book and George Mason’s Institute for Immigration Research are proud to celebrate the seventh New American Voices Award–a post-publication book prize recognizing the work of first-generation American writers. Judges Myriam J.A. Chancy, V.V. Ganeshananthan, and Karin Tanabe have put together a powerful longlist. 

The twelve books celebrated on the New American Voices Award Longlist are:

  • The Material, Camille Bordas (Penguin Random House)
  • Green Frog, Gina Chung (Vintage)
  • The Sons of El Rey, Alex Espinoza (Simon & Schuster)
  • A Great Country, Shilpi Somaya Gowda (Mariner Books)
  • Airplane Mode, Shahnaz Habib (Catapult)
  • Inside the Mirror, Parul Kapur (University of Nebraska Press)
  • Memory Piece, Lisa Ko (Riverhead)
  • Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, Ananda Lima (Tor)
  • The Road to the Country, Chigozie Obioma (Hogarth)
  • There Is A Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. (Mariner Books)
  • Hombrecito, Santiago Jose Sanchez (Riverhead) 
  • Private Equity, Carrie Sun (Penguin Press) 

The three finalists will be announced later this summer, and they will join the judges for an award ceremony and reading to discuss their work. The event will be hosted by Fall for the Book during the October festival at George Mason University’s Fairfax, VA Campus. Previous winners of the New American Voices Award are: Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance, Melissa Rivero’s The Affairs of the Falcóns, Lysley Tenorio’s The Son of Good Fortune, Patricia Engel’s  Infinite Country, Sindya Bhanoo’s Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, and Rachel Heng’s The Great Reclamation. 

More About the Award

About the Judges

Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author of the novel Village Weavers, a Time best book of April. Her previous novel, What Storm, What Thunder, was named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, and The Globe and Mail. Her past novels include The Loneliness of Angels, winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award in Fiction and Spirit of Haiti.  She is also the author of several nonfiction works, including most recently, Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters.  She is a Guggenheim Fellow and HBA Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College in California.

V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night, longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Asian Prize, shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize, and a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and Love Marriage, longlisted for the Women’s Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. She has been visiting faculty at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota.

Karin Tanabe is the author of seven novels, including her most recent, The Sunset Crowd. A former Politico reporter, her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Newsday. She is a frequent book reviewer for The Washington Post and has appeared as a celebrity and politics expert on Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and the CBS Early Show. Karin is a graduate of Vassar College and lives in Washington DC.

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