Believer Book Award
Believer Book Award is an American literary award presented yearly by The Believer magazine to novels and story collections, nonfiction books or essay collections, poetry collections, and, beginning in 2021 (awarding to books published in 2020), works of graphic narrative the magazine's editors thought were the "strongest and most under-appreciated" of the year.[1] A shortlist and longlist are announced for each genre, along with reader's favorites, then a final winner is selected by the magazine's editors. The inaugural award was in 2005 for books published in 2004.
Winners and shortlist
The year below denotes when the books were published; the award is announced the following year. Thus below, the inaugural 2004 books were announced in early to mid-2005.
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger (
)
2004
The shortlist was announced in February 2005.[2] The winner was announced in March 2005.[3]
- Sam Lipsyte, Home Land
- Michelle de Kretser, The Hamilton Case
- Lucy Ellmann, Dot in the Universe
- Selah Saterstrom, The Pink Institution
- Francisco Goldman, The Divine Husband
2005
The shortlist was announced in February 2006.[4] The winner was announced in March 2006.[5]
- Sesshu Foster, Atomik Aztex
- Trinie Dalton, Wide Eyed
- Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures
- John Wray, Canaan's Tongue
- Tom Bissell, God Lives in St. Petersburg
2006
The winner, and reader survey of best books, was announced in May 2007.[6]
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
- Reader and writer survey of best books.
2007
The shortlist was announced in May 2008.[7] The winner was announced in June 2008.[8]
- Tom McCarthy, Remainder
- Jesse Ball, Samedi the Deafness
- Gerard Donovan, Sunless
- Steve Erickson, Zeroville
- Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss
- Alain Mabanckou, African Psycho
- Miranda Mellis, The Revisionist
- Lydie Salvayre, The Power of Flies
- Selah Saterstrom, The Meat and Spirit Plan
- Joe Weisberg, An Ordinary Spy
2008
The shortlist was announced in February 2009.[9] The winner was announced in March 2009.[10][11]
- Emily Perkins, Novel About My Wife
- Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else
- Mary Ruefle, The Most of It
- John Olson, Souls of Wind
- Jim Krusoe, Girl Factory
- Tod Wodicka, All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well
- Toby Olson, Tampico
- Shannon Burke, Black Flies
2009
The shortlist was announced in March 2010.[12] The winner was announced in May 2010.[13]
- Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier
- Christopher Miller, The Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank
- Mary Robison, One D.O.A., One on the Way
- Blake Butler, Scorch Atlas
- Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood
2010
The shortlist was announced in March 2011.[14] The winner was announced in May 2011.[15]
- James Hynes, Next
- Danielle Dutton, Sprawl
- Kira Henehan, Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles
- Grace Krilanovich, The Orange Eats Creeps
- Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
2011
The shortlist was announced in March 2012.[16][17][18] The winner was announced in May 2012.[19][20]
- Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station
- Jesse Ball, The Curfew
- Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods
- Lars Iyer, Spurious
- Michelle Latiolais, Widow
2012
The shortlist was announced in March 2013.[21] The winner was announced in April 2013.[22]
- Tamara Faith Berger, Maidenhead
- Barbara Browning, I'm Trying to Reach You
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle (Book One)
- Jim Krusoe, Parsifal
- Sergio De La Pava, A Naked Singularity
2013
The shortlist was announced in March 2014.[23] The winner was announced in April 2014.[24]
- Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories
- Kiese Laymon, Long Division
- Fiona Maazel, Woke Up Lonely
- Keith Ridgway, Hawthorn and Child
- Bennett Sims, A Questionable Shape
2014
The shortlist was announced in March 2015.[25] The winner was announced in the Fall 2015 issue.[26]
- Ottessa Moshfegh, McGlue
- Diane Cook, Man V. Nature
- Valeria Luiselli, Faces in the Crowd
- Elizabeth McCracken, Thunderstruck and Other Stories
- Antoine Volodine, Writers
2017
The shortlist was announced in March 2018.[27] The winner was announced in June 2018.
- Matthew Rohrer, The Others
- Andrew Durbin, MacArthur Park
- Deepak Unnikrishnan, Temporary People
- Jenny Zhang, Sour Heart
- Leyna Krow, I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking
2018
The longlist was announced in January 2019.[28] The shortlist and winner was announced in April 2019.[29]
- Rita Bullwinkel, Belly Up
- Mathias Énard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants
- Ben Passmore, Your Black Friend and Other Strangers
- Shelley Jackson, Riddance; Or: The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children
- Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, Seventeen
2019
The longlist was announced on January 15 2020.[30] The shortlist and winner was announced in March 2020.[31] [32]
- Fiction: Ebony Flowers, Hot Comb
- Sarah Rose Etter, The Book of X
- Adam Ehrlich Sachs, The Organs of Sense
- Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein, A Girl Returned
- Hebe Uhart, translated by Maureen Shaughnessy, The Scent of Buenos Aires
- Nonfiction: Trisha Low, Socialist Realism (Coffee House Press)
- Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, translated by Janet Hong, Grass (Drawn & Quarterly)
- Andrea Long Chu, Females (Verso Books)
- Emmanuel Carrère, translated by John Lambert, 97,196 Words (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Heather Christle, The Crying Book (Catapult Books)
- Poetry: Deborah Landau, Soft Targets (Copper Canyon Press)
- Cameron Awkward-Rich, Dispatch (Persea Books)
- Christopher Kondrich, Valuing (University of Georgia Press)
- Steve Healey, Safe Houses I Have Known (Coffee House Press)
- Franny Choi, Soft Science (Alice James Books)
2020
The longlist was announced on January 15, 2021.[33] The shortlist and winners were announced May 18, 2021.[34] [35]
- Fiction: Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund, Long Live the Post Horn! (Verso Books)
- What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron
- The White Dress by Nathalie Léger (translated by Natasha Lehrer)
- Lisa Robertson, The Baudelaire Fractal
- Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife
- Nonfiction: Ashon T. Crawley, The Lonely Letters (Duke University Press)
- Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn, A Fish Growing Lungs
- Emerson Whitney, Heaven
- Emily J. Lordi, The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s
- Namwali Serpell, Stranger Faces
- Poetry: Yona Harvey, You Don’t Have to Go to Mars For Love (Four Way Books)
- John Murillo, Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
- Noah Falck, Exclusions
- Candice Wuehle, Death Industrial Complex
- Tess Taylor, Rift Zone
- Graphic Narrative: Jonathan Hill, Odessa (Oni Press)
- Danny Noble, Shame Pudding: A Graphic Memoir
- Vivian Chong and Georgia Webber, Dancing after TEN
- Lawrence Lindell, From Truth with Truth
- Gipi, translated by Jaime Richards, One Story
See also
References
- ↑ "The Believer Book Award", The Millions, March 3, 2011
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