The finalists for the 2024 Kirkus Prize have been revealed, with 18 books contending for one of the richest annual literary awards in the world.
The fiction shortlist is composed of Jennine Capó Crucet’s Say Hello to My Little Friend, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, Percival Everett’s James, Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, Richard Powers’ Playground, and Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
The jurors for the fiction prize are Christine Bollow, the co-owner and director of programs for Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Maryland; Jeffrey Burke, a Kirkus reviewer and former editor at Harper’s magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and Bloomberg News; and Kirkus fiction editor Laurie Muchnick.
The finalists for the nonfiction prize are Steve Coll’s The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq; Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space; Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir; Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise; Shefali Luthra’s Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America; and Carvell Wallace’s Another Word for Love: A Memoir.
Judging the nonfiction award are Hannah Bae, a journalist, author, and illustrator whose work has appeared in the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s the Margins, Catapult, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the anthologies Our Red Book and (Don’t) Call Me Crazy; Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mary Ann Gwinn, whose reviews have appeared in publications including Kirkus Reviews, the Los Angeles Times, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the Seattle Times; and Kirkus editor-in-chief Tom Beer.
The young readers’ literature category is divided into three subcategories featuring two books each. In picture books, the finalists are We Who Produce Pearls, written by Joanna Ho and illustrated by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and There Was a Party for Langston, written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey.
Making the middle-grade list are Safiyyah’s War by Hiba Noor Khan and Shark Teeth by Sherri Winston, while the young adult finalists are Gather by Kenneth M. Cadow and Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo.
The young readers’ literature prize is judged by Christopher A. Biss-Brown, curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia and Kirkus reviewer; Michelle H. Martin, the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor in Children and Youth Services in the Information School at the University of Washington; and Kirkus young readers’ editors Mahnaz Dar and Laura Simeon.
“The finalists for the 2024 Kirkus Prize represent the very best of an outstanding crop of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ titles published in the U.S. this year,” Beer said in a statement. “They’re all books that speak to our time, and we know they’ll be read for years to come.”
Each award comes with a $50,000 cash prize. Books become eligible for the prizes by receiving a starred review from Kirkus, a distinction achieved by only about 10% of the books reviewed in the magazine.
The Kirkus Prize was first awarded in 2014. Previous winners include James McBride for The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Jack E. Davis for The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, and Harmony Becker for Himawari House.
The winners of this year’s awards will be announced at an in-person ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York on Oct. 16, 2024, that will be livestreamed on Kirkus’ YouTube channel at 7:30 p.m. Eastern.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
