Finalist: Swamplandia! , by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf )
An adventure tale about an eccentric family adrift in its failing alligator-wrestling theme park, told by a 13-year-old heroine wise beyond her years.
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Fiction in 2012:
David Foster Wallace
A posthumously completed novel, animated by grand ambition, that explores boredom and bureaucracy in the American workplace.
Denis Johnson
A novella about a day laborer in the old American West, bearing witness to terrors and glories with compassionate, heartbreaking calm.
The Jury
The Jury
Susan Larson(Chair )
former book editor, The Times-Picayune and
Maureen Corrigan
critic in residence, Georgetown University and
Michael Cunningham*
novelist
Winners in Fiction
Jennifer Egan
An inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed.
Paul Harding
A powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.
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.
2012 Prize Winners
No award
No award
Manning Marable
An exploration of the legendary life and provocative views of one of the most significant African-Americans in U.S. history, a work that separates fact from fiction and blends the heroic and tragic.
John Lewis Gaddis
An engaging portrait of a globetrotting diplomat whose complicated life was interwoven with the Cold War and America's emergence as the world's dominant power.
Tracy K. Smith
A collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain.