NEW YORK: A debut novel about a young Black woman in publishing who has an affair with a married white man has won a $50,000 award. Raven Leilani’s Luster is this year’s winner of the Kirkus Prize for fiction.
The trade publication Kirkus Reviews announced two other $50,000 honors on Wednesday: Mychal Denzel Smith’s Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream won for best nonfiction and Derrick Barnes’ I Am Every Good Thing, with illustrations by Gordon C. James, for young people’s literature. Barnes and James won in 2018 for Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut.
Finalists included two books endorsed by Oprah Winfrey: James McBride’s novel Deacon King Kong and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
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This story has been corrected to show that Raven Leilani’s Luster is the winner of the fiction prize. A previous version of the story reported an incorrect winner.
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