The Center for Fiction Announces the 2016 First Novel Prize Long List

The Center for Fiction has announced the long list for the 2016 First Novel Prize. The winner of the prize will receive $10,000. Previous winners include Junot Díaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead/Penguin), Ben Fountain for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco/HarperCollins), and most recently, Viet Thanh Nguyen for The Sympathizer (Grove Press).This year’s list is:

The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones (Mariner Books)

All Joe Knight by Kevin Morris (Grove Press)

Another Place You’ve Never Been by Rebecca Kauffman (Soft Skull Press)

As Close to Us as Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner (Lee Boudreaux Books)

The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter by Kia Corthron (Seven Stories Press)

Dodgers by Bill Beverly (Crown)

Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson (Harper)

The Girls by Emma Cline (Random House)

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn (Liveright)

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Alfred A. Knopf)

How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee (Viking)

Hurt People by Cote Smith (FSG Originals)

The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni (Counterpoint)

The Longest Night by Andria Williams (Random House)

The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay (Melville House)

The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales (Riverhead Books)

Shelter by Jung Yun (Picador USA)

Stork Mountain by Miroslav Penkov (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Sweetgirl by Travis Mulhauser (Ecco)

Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O’Connor (Viking)

Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss (Scout Press)

We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge (Algonquin Books)

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves (Scribner)

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore (Hogarth)