Percival Everett, Adam Higginbotham, and Kenneth M. Cadow are the winners of this year’s Kirkus Prizes, given annually by Kirkus Reviews to books of exceptional merit.
The winners were announced at a ceremony Wednesday night at Tribeca Rooftop in New York, which was livestreamed on Kirkus’ YouTube channel.
Everett took home the fiction prize for James, his retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of the enslaved man Jim. In a citation, the prize jurors called the novel, which is also a finalist for the National Book Award and the Booker Prize, “enthralling” and “a necessary companion to Twain’s masterpiece.”
The fiction jurors for this year’s prize were Loyalty Bookstores co-owner Christine Bollow, Kirkus reviewer Jeffrey Burke, and Kirkus fiction editor Laurie Muchnick.
The nonfiction award went to Higginbotham for Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, an account of the 1986 space shuttle disaster that killed its seven crew members. The judges praised the book as “meticulously reported, beautifully written, and devastating in its account of an entirely preventable tragedy.”
Jurors for the nonfiction award were journalists Hannah Bae and Mary Ann Gwinn, alongside Kirkus editor-in-chief Tom Beer.
Winning the young readers’ literature prize was Cadow for Gather, his young adult novel about a boy living in poverty with his mother, who is struggling with opioid addiction. In their citation, the jurors wrote of the book, a National Book Award finalist, “Humor, grace, and tenderness bring to life this beautifully realized story.”
The young readers’ literature jurors were library curator and Kirkus reviewer Christopher A. Biss-Brown, professor Michelle H. Martin, and Kirkus young readers’ editors Mahnaz Dar and Laura Simeon.
The jurors for the prizes evaluated 1,444 books that received a Kirkus star and were published during the award’s eligibility period. The winners receive a trophy created by the London design team of Vezzini & Chen, as well as a $50,000 cash award, making the Kirkus Prize one of the richest annual literary awards in the world.
Kirkus editor-in-chief Beer said in a statement, “This year’s prize-winning books—each written with elegance and lucidity—illuminate tragedies both personal and historical, helping us to better understand our world and the spirit of human resilience.”
The Kirkus Prize was first awarded in 2014. Previous winners include Jason Reynolds for As Brave as You, Susan Faludi for In the Darkroom, and James McBride for The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
