Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Richard Powers, and Kirstin Valdez Quade are among the authors longlisted for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Aspen Institute announced in a news release.
The prize, which is given each year to “an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture,” was first awarded in 2018.
Jeffers made the longlist for her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, a Kirkus Prize finalist which was also longlisted for the National Book Award. Powers’ Booker Prize–shortlisted Bewilderment was nominated for the award, as was Quade’s The Five Wounds, which is also a finalist for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Half of the 16 books nominated for the prize are debuts, including Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed, Abundance by Jakob Guanzon, Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen, and Bewilderness by Karen Tucker.
Other nominated titles include Omar El Akkad’s Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning What Strange Paradise, Jason Mott’s National Book Award–shortlisted Hell of a Book, and Kaitlyn Greenidge’s Libertie.
The winner of the award will be announced at a ceremony in New York on April 21, 2022. A full list of nominees is available at the Aspen Institute’s website.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
