Chantel Acevedo, Bindu Bansinath, and Ada Ferrer Named Finalists for 2026 New American Voices Award
Chantel Acevedo’s Cages, Bindu Bansinath’s Men Like Ours, and Ada Ferrer’s Keeper of My Kin, have been named finalists for the New American Voices Award, presented in partnership with Fall for the Book and the Institute for Immigration Research. Celebrating its ninth anniversary, this post-publication award recognizes recently published works that illuminate the complexity of human experience as told by immigrants, whose work is historically underrepresented in writing and publishing. This year’s book prize was judged by Angie Cruz, Donna Hemans, and Weike Wang.
The winner will be announced this fall and all three finalists will appear at an award ceremony, where they will read from and discuss their work. The event will be hosted by Fall for the Book on Thursday, October 8 at 4:30 p.m. at George Mason University’s Fairfax, VA campus.
Judges Citations
Chantel Acevedo, Cages
Cages by Chantel Acevedo tells the story of Felix, a Cuban zookeeper who risks everything for love. The novel feels both immersive and emotional, as it moves from Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis to 1960s London and finally to AIDS-era Miami. With its polyphonic structure, Acevedo’s compassionate novel offers a unique point-of-view on exile, forbidden love, fractured families, and the difficulty of ever fully knowing another person during this historic period.
About the Author: Called “a master storyteller” by Kirkus Reviews, Chantel Acevedo is the author of the novels Love and Ghost Letters, A Falling Star, The Distant Marvels, and The Living Infinite, hailed by Booklist as a “vivid and enthralling tale of love and redemption.” Cages is her newest novel. Acevedo’s middle grade books have been called “Riveting and suspenseful”and have been listed on several state educator and librarian lists. Acevedo is a Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Miami.
Bindu Bansinath, Men Like Ours
Men Like Ours by Bindu Bansinath – We love this novel set in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Told in a circuitous narrative style with a clear-eyed examination of the frictions that can hide inside seemingly close-knit communities, the novel shifts masterfully between a coming-of-age story, family drama, social satire, and murder mystery. Unapologetically honest and funny, Bansinath is an undeniable literary force.
About the Author: Bindu Bansinath is a senior writer for New York Magazine’s The Cut. Men Like Ours is her debut novel. She lives in Jersey City.
Ada Ferrer, Keeper of My Kin
Keeper of My Kin by Ada Ferrer brings to life the agony of starting over: people leaving home, trying to survive, and carrying the grief of what is left behind. Through vivid imagery and a scrapbook-like accumulation of letters, documents and family stories, Ferrer gives a human face to histories too often reduced to politics, sanctions, and humanitarian crises. At the heart of the book thrums a powerful maternal lineage, and the lifelong guilt of leaving a child behind. The story is not just that of immigration but of love and separation, as well as the impossible choices families make during historic and political upheavals. A timely book!
About the Author: Ada Ferrer is Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. From 1995 to 2024, she taught at New York University. She is the author, most recently, of Cuba: An American History, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in history, and a finalist for the Cundill History Prize. Her earlier books, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898 and Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution won multiple prizes, among them the Frederick Douglass Book Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, three prizes from the American Historical Association, and the Berkshire Book Prize for the best first book by a woman in any field of history. Ferrer has received support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Dorothy and Lewis Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Social Science Research Council, among many others. Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, Ferrer has been traveling to and conducting research on the island since 1990.
Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, shortlisted for The Aspen Words Literary Prize, winner of the Gold Medal, Latino Book Award/The Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Book Award, longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize and chosen for The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022 and The Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Fiction. Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships, residencies and awards including the 2025 USA Fellowship, The Poets & Writers /Writers For Writers Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She’s the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and teaches at Columbia University.
Donna Hemans is the author of three novels, River Woman, Tea by the Sea, and The House of Plain Truth. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Ms. Magazine, Oprah Daily, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. She received her undergraduate degree in English and Media Studies from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is also the owner of DC Writers Room, a co-working studio for writers based in Washington, D.C.
Weike Wang is the author of Chemistry, Joan is Okay, and Rental House. She is the recipient of a Pen Hemingway, a Whiting award and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Best American Short Stories and has won two O. Henry Prizes. She earned her MFA from Boston University and her other degrees from Harvard. She currently lives in New York City and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Barnard College and Boston University.