Finalist: All Souls , by Christine Schutt (Harcourt )
A memorable novel that focuses on the senior class at an exclusive all-girl Manhattan prep school where a beloved student battles a rare cancer, fiercely honest, carefully observed and subtly rendered.
Winners
Prize Winner in Fiction in 2009:
Elizabeth Strout
A collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating.
Fiction
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Fiction in 2009:
Louise Erdrich
A haunting novel that explores racial discord, loss of land and changing fortunes in a corner of North Dakota where Native Americans and whites share a tangled history.
The Jury
The Jury
R.H.W. Dillard
professor, Jackson Center for Creative Writing
Susan Larson(chair )
book editor
Nancy Pearl
author and librarian, Center for the Book
Winners in Fiction
2009 Prize Winners
Patrick Farrell
For his provocative, impeccably composed images of despair after Hurricane Ike and other lethal storms caused a humanitarian disaster in Haiti.
W.S. Merwin
A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.
Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon
For the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.
Staff
For its swift and sweeping coverage of a sex scandal that resulted in the resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, breaking the story on its Web site and then developing it with authoritative, rapid-fire reports.