Hernan Diaz, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, and Xochitl Gonzalez are among the finalists for the 2023 Gotham Book Prize, given annually to “the best book published that calendar year—either fiction or nonfiction—that either is about New York City or takes place in New York City.”
Diaz made the list of finalists for his novel Trust, which won the Kirkus Prize and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Sullivan was named a finalist for her novel Big Girl, as was Gonzalez for Olga Dies Dreaming.
Novels dominated this year’s list of finalists, which also includes Lisa Hsiao Chen’s Activities of Daily Living; Dwyer Murphy’s An Honest Living; James Hannaham’s Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta; Bushra Rehman’s Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion; Jill Bialosky’s The Deceptions; and Martha Anne Toll’s Three Muses.
One story collection made the list, Sidik Fofana’s Stories From the Tenants Downstairs, along with a work of nonfiction, John Wood Sweet’s The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America.
The Gotham Book Prize was established in 2020 by philanthropists Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson. The previous winners of the prize were James McBride for Deacon King Kong and Andrea Elliott for Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City.
The winner of the award, which comes with a cash prize of $50,000, will be announced this spring at P&T Knitwear, the Manhattan bookstore founded by Tusk.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
