The winners of the 2020 Barry Awards, announced during this year's virtual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, are:
Best Mystery/Crime Novel: The Lost Man by Jane Harper
Best First Mystery/Crime Novel: The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup
Best Paperback Original Mystery/Crime Novel: Missing Daughter by Rick Mofina
Best Thriller: The Chain by Adrian McKinty
Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade: Suspect by Robert Crais
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Michael Kleber-Diggs won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize for his manuscript, Worldly Things. The award honors "the legacy of one of the most original and accomplished poets to debut in recent years, and to reward outstanding emerging poets for years to come." It was created by Milkweed Editions in partnership with the Alan B. Slifka Foundation. Kleber-Diggs will receive $10,000 and publication by Milkweed in June 2021.
The winner was chosen by poet and judge Henri Cole, who said: "Michael Kleber-Diggs's poems quietly put pressure on us to live up to our nation's ideals. He gives voice to the experiences and aspirations of middle-class Black America, and though the promised land is faraway, he finds grace in the natural world, long marriage, and fathering. These supple, socially responsible poems seem to me a triumphant, paradoxical, luminous response to a violent time in our history."