FINALISTS: We continue sharing the finalists for the 10th annual Chautauqua Prize with a previous winner’s work that is in contention for this year’s honor:
— The Bear, by Andrew Krivak (Bellevue Literary Press) : From previous Chautauqua Prize winner Andrew Krivak comes a fable of Earth’s last two human inhabitants. In the Edenic future of The Bear, a girl and her father live close to the land, possess few remnants of civilization, and the father prepares the girl for an adulthood in harmony with nature.
— Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, by Natasha Trethewey (ECCO) : A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive is a reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy.
— Deep Delta Justice: A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South, by Matthew Van Meter (Little, Brown) : In 1966 in a small town in Louisiana, a 19-year-old black man named Gary Duncan pulled his car off the road to stop a fight. Duncan was arrested a few minutes later for the crime of putting his hand on the arm of a white child. Journalist Matthew Van Meter brings alive how a seemingly minor incident brought massive, systemic change to the criminal justice system. Through first-person interviews and in-depth research, “Van Meter draws his characters as skillfully as any novelist,” one reader noted. “This book,” wrote another, “is a must-read.”
— How Much of These Hills is Gold, by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books) : Set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape — trying not just to survive but to find a home.
The Chautauqua Prize, inspired since its inception by the late literary and entertainment industry attorney Michael Rudell, and his wife, Alice, draws upon Chautauqua Institution’s considerable literary legacy to celebrate a book that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and to honor the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts.
The winning book will be selected from this shortlist and announced in late May.
