Young Lions Fiction Finalists

The finalists for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, given to a writer thirty-five or younger, were announced this week, and—not to toot our own horn or anything, but—two of the five, Rivka Galchen and Salvatore Scibona, were included in our July/August 2008 feature on debut fiction writers.

Galchen was nominated for her novel Atmospheric Disturbances (HarperCollins, 2008), which was also mentioned in Sarah Weinman's article, "Book Trailers: The Key to Successful Marketing" (November/December, 2008), for its especially inventive trailer

Salvatore Scibona was nominated for his novel,The End, published by Graywolf Press, the St. Paul-based indie, whose authors have been raking in the acclaim lately. Along with Scibona's, Graywolf publishes the work of inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander and recently released a special chapbook of Alexander's poem "Praise Song for the Day." Matthea Harvey recently won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given for a book by a midcareer poet, for her collection Modern Life, which Graywolf published in 2007. (Harvey, by the way, was featured in "Why We Write Now," our special feature on inspiration included in our January/February 2009 issue.)

The three other finalists are Jon Fasman for The Unpossessed City (Penguin, 2008), Sana Krasikov for One More Year (Spiegel & Grau, 2008), and Zachary Mason for The Lost Books of the Odyssey (Starcherone, 2008).

The winner, who receives $10,000, who be announced on March 16.