Finalists have been named for the £10,000 (about $12,890) Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, honoring "a book of the highest literary merit--fiction, nonfiction or poetry--which best evokes the spirit of a place." The winner will be announced on May 8. This year's shortlisted titles are:
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
In a Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie
Augustown by Kei Miller
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain
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Bret Anthony Johnston has won the £30,000 (about $37,460) Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the richest in the world for a single short story, for his story, "Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows About Horses."
Judge and journalist Mark Lawson commented, "Great short stories achieve a breadth of meaning far greater than the length of their telling. In Bret Anthony Johnston's story, a small patch of Texas cattle country opens up long vistas on love, death, memory and the survival instinct, human and equine. Johnston showed brilliance over the long distance in his novel, Remember Me Like This, and now proves equally adept at brevity. Small details from American and animal lives take on vast significance, and every line has the kick of a horse."
Johnston is director of creative writing at Harvard University.
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Richard Ford will receive the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association's 2017 Legacy Award, which honors an author for his or her body of work that members have enjoyed reading and selling. Ford will receive the award at the NAIBA Awards Banquet on Saturday, October 7, in Cherry Hill, N.J., during the association's fall conference.
Ford is the author of the Bascombe novels, which include The Sportswriter and its sequels; Independence Day, the first novel to win the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Lay of the Land; Let Me Be Frank with You; and Canada. He has also written the short story collections Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins and the memoir Between Them: Remembering My Parents.