The Gotham Book Prize is given to the best fiction or nonfiction book published each calendar year that takes place in or is about New York City. The prize grants its winner $50,000, and was created in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic by Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson.
Past winners include Deacon King Kong by James McBride (2021), Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott (2022), The Sewing Girl’s Tale by John Wood Sweet (2023), and Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana (2023).
This year, the Gotham Book Prize award ceremony will be held at Queens Public Library on June 5th. The Queens Public Library President and CEO Dennis M. Walcott had this to say about the finalists: “These titles span decades of New York’s history and reveal some amazing stories of people and places in each of its boroughs that define the city today. I am a lifelong New Yorker and love that several of them transported me back to a period I lived through and vividly recall. But what was most beautiful to me is that each book showed me a side of the city I may never have experienced otherwise. Congratulations to the finalists on their outstanding work”
The 2024 Gotham Book Prize Finalists are as follows:
All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Brinkley
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Flores and Miss Paula by Melissa Rivero
Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park
Rikers: An Oral History by Graham Rayman, Reuven Blau
The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios
The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever by Prudence Peiffer
The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune by Alexander Stille
We Are a Haunting by Tyriek White
Women of the Post by Joshunda Sanders
To learn more about the award, visit gothambookprize.org.
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