For judges of the second annual Aspen Words Literary Prize, there was little question who ought to walk away with the award. Colin Dwyer from NPR has the story.
In the end, in fact, the decision was unanimous: The panel picked An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones.
“It’s a book for the long haul,” writer Samrat Upadhyay told NPR. Upadhyay, a finalist for last year’s prize, chaired this year’s panel of judges. And he said that with An American Marriage, Jones managed to craft a novel that’s “going to have a place in the literary imagination for a long time.”
The award, which the nonprofit literary organization Aspen Words doles out in partnership with NPR, offers $35,000 for an exemplary work that deploys fiction to grapple with difficult social issues.
“So many of us who want to write and engage with the issues of the day, we’re encouraged not to. We’re told that that’s not what real art does,” Jones said Thursday at the Morgan Library in New York City, where she accepted the prize. “And an award like this, I think it encourages all of us to keep following the strength of our convictions.”
Buy Tayari Jones’ award-winning novel An American Marriage here!
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