T. Geronimo Johnson has won the inaugural Simpson Family Literary Prize, sponsored by the Simpson Family Literary Project, which awards $50,000 to "an author of fiction in the middle of a burgeoning career."
Johnson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford and has taught writing at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Prague Summer Program, San Quentin and elsewhere. His first novel, Hold It 'Til It Hurts, was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award. Welcome to Braggsville was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award, longlisted for the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, named one of the 10 books all Georgians should read by the Georgia Center for the Book, included on Time Magazine's list of the top 10 books of 2015, awarded the Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and named the winner of the 2015 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Johnson was a 2016 National Book Award judge.
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The Green Carnation Prize has unveiled its shortlist of five books that, according to chair of judges John Boyne, "combine great storytelling with poetic language and authentic voices. Individually, each one has the power to move the reader while collectively they display the extraordinary diversity at play within the literary work of the LGBTQ community." The winner will be revealed May 22 at Foyles' flagship store.
The prize, with the support of Foyles, "seeks to champion the best writing by an LGBTQ author in the U.K. It is a vital recognition and celebration for books as diverse as the community it represents and unified by a common thread: sheer quality of writing." This year's shortlisted titles are:
London Lies Beneath by Stella Duffy
How to Survive a Plague by David France
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan
Augustown by Kei Miller