Conversation and awards at The Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan on Wednesday, April 23Aspen, CO, March 12, 2025 –– Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute, today announced the finalists for the Aspen Words Literary Prize (AWLP), a $35,000 annual award for a work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture. The 2025 shortlist:
- James by Percival Everett (Doubleday)
- Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian (Dzanc Books)
- Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange (Penguin Random House)
- There Is A Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr. (Mariner Books)
- The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Avid Reader Press)
The shortlisted titles address a broad range of important contemporary social issues, including identity, faith, dispossession and the lasting impact of immigration, erasure and slavery. The finalists were selected by a five-member jury comprised of Dr. John Deasy,Louise Erdrich, Ben Fountain, Vanessa HuaandTayari Jones.The winner of the $35,000 award will be revealed at a free, public awards ceremony on Wednesday, April 23 at The Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Ave, New York, NY). The event will feature a conversation with the finalists moderated by essayist, broadcaster and critic Bilal Qureshi. For those in Aspen, alive watch party will take place at Pitkin County Library (120 N. Mill St., Aspen, CO).
JURY CITATIONS James by Percival Everett
James, from its very title, is a trickster of a novel. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an unlikely briar patch through which Percival Everett escapes every expectation of the neo-slave narrative. With a wit sharp enough to injure as effortlessly as it amuses, this is a re-sculpting of the foundational narrative of America’s racial past. James is profoundly uncompromising; it refuses to sacrifice rigor in favor of plot, gravity in facility of humor, or invention in honor of the triggering chestnut. In the antebellum landscape of these pages, chattel slavery may be the law of the land, but language is the coin of the realm. By this measure, James—and by extension, his author—possesses riches beyond our imagining. Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian
Set against the backdrop of a newly independent Nigeria, Afabwaje Kurian’s poignant and powerful debut examines the post-colonial reality in a story that is at once intersectional and deeply personal. With nods to Chinua Achebe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kurian depicts 1971 Nigeria in such a way that it is rendered timeless and timely at once. Themes of faith, belonging, and self-governance intersect with the tumult and unpredictability of desire and community. Her prose shimmers as the plot simmers. Before the Mango Ripens announces a bold new voice in contemporary fiction. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Every tribal nation has its own story that deserves fierce emotional and intellectual telling. Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, takes us from the Sand Creek Massacre to Oakland, California. On the way there, his characters become the bearers of America’s history of violence, the vessels of trauma and spirituality, and the wandering stars of addiction and redemption. Wandering Stars serves to deepen and inform Tommy Orange’s fine debut novel There, There, but it also stands on its own as a mesmerizing epic drama.
There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr.
Inventive and exhilarating, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven charts the Salvadoran diaspora in a dozen dazzling stories that cross borders, genres, space, and time. By turns fierce and tender, poignant and hilarious, Ruben Reyes Jr. examines questions of home and belonging, of immigration and identity. This stunning collection explores the possibilities of alternate histories and imagined futures in an extraordinary range of characters—a cyborg, a bisexual reggaeton star, a Martian outlaw, a migrant boy, and more. A bold, iconoclastic debut.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Isabel, the young Dutch woman at the heart of Yael van der Wouden’s searing debut novel The Safekeep, lives a solitary life in the comfortable country house that her family acquired in the midst of World War II. Now in her early thirties, Isabel is haunted by childhood memories of the war and no less by the mysterious origins of the house, which came fully furnished, with plates and linens and even a chest of toys that Isabel and her brothers were allowed to claim for their own. When Isabel’s older brother deposits his enigmatic, seemingly feckless girlfriend Eva at the house for a month, Isabel’s narrow bourgeois life explodes, and her most private self is forced into the light. Van der Wouden’s brilliant, fiercely passionate, and bracingly unsentimental novel explores with rare mastery the brutal legacies of war, erasure, genocide, and dispossession.
For more information, go to: https://www.aspenwords.org/literary-prize/
Author headshots & book jackets: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/36h8mxs3y4v5mmjlsxtgw/ALTZ_bdrhmd1nZQ6W6C934I?rlkey=ixc8rpzchavg7w4r0su6gcgeq&st=am2yfqan&dl=0
ABOUT ASPEN WORDS
Aspen Words was founded in 1976 as a literary center based in Aspen, CO. A program of the Aspen Institute, its mission is to encourage writers, inspire readers and connect people through the power of stories. For more information, visit www.aspenwords.org
ABOUT THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization whose purpose is to ignite human potential to build understanding and create new possibilities for a better world. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve society’s greatest challenges. It is headquartered in Washington, DC and has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, as well as an international network of partners. For more information, visit www.aspeninstitute.org.
ABOUT THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
The $35,000 Aspen Words Literary Prize is awarded annually to an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture. Open to authors of any nationality, the award is one of the largest literary prizes in the United States, and one of the few focused exclusively on fiction with a social impact. The inaugural award was presented to Mohsin Hamid in 2018 for Exit West, his novel about migration and refugees. Tayari Jones won the 2019 prize for An American Marriage, her novel about racism and unjust incarceration; Christy Lefteri received the 2020 prize for her novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo, about Syrian refugees; Louise Erdrich won the 2021 award for The Night Watchman, about Native American dispossession; Dawnie Walton received the 2022 prize for The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, which explores identity, place and the influence of pop culture; Jamil Jan Kochai was awarded the 2023 prize for The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, a powerful short story collection about Afghans, Afghan Americans and the surreal, violent aftershocks of state violence; Isabella Hammad was awarded the 2024 prize for Enter Ghost, a story of diaspora, displacement and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Eligible works include novels or short story collections that address questions of violence, inequality, gender, the environment, immigration, religion, racism or other social issues.
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ASPEN WORDS CONTACT
Mallory Kaufman
Aspen Words Senior Program Associate | The Aspen Institute
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