Stanford University Libraries announces shortlist for the seventh 
William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (Saroyan Prize).

Fiction

• Faint Promise of Rain 
       by Anjali Mitter Duva (She Writes Press)

• Chase Us 
       by Sean Ennis (Little A)

• A Village in the Fields 
       by Patty Enrado (Eastwind Books of Berkeley)

• 'Til the Well Runs Dry 
       by Lauren Francis-Sharma (Henry Holt & Co.)

• Now We Will Be Happy 
       by Amina Gautier (University of Nebraska Press)

• Welcome to Braggsville 
       by T. Geronimo Johnson (HarperCollins)

• Counternarratives 
       by John Keene (New Directions)

• The Gender of Inanimate Objects 
       by Laura Marello (Tailwinds Press)

• Ghost Horse 
       by Thomas H. McNeely (Gival Press)

• The Ash Tree 
       by Daniel Melnick (West of West Books)

• A Hero 
       by Charlotte R. Mendel (Inanna Publications)

• Waiting for the Electricity 
       by Christina Nichol (The Overlook Press)

• The Given World 
       by Marian Palaia (Simon & Schuster)

• Backlands 
       by Victoria Shorr (W.W. Norton & Co.)

• Better Than War 
       by Siamak Vossoughi (University of Georgia Press)

Non-Fiction

• The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World
       by Joel K. Bourne Jr. (W.W. Norton & Co.)

• Speed Kings: The 1932 Winter Olympics and the Fastest Men in the World
       by Andy Bull (Avery)

• The Four Words for Home: A Memoir of Two Families
       by Angie Chuang (Willow Books)

• Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging
       by Joshua Doležal (University of Iowa Press)

• Russian Tattoo
       by Elena Gorokhova (Simon & Schuster)

• Dispatches from the Front: The Life of Matthew Halton, Canada's Voice at War
       by David Halton (McClelland & Stewart)

• Bettyville
       by George Hodgman (Viking)

• Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe
       by Lori Jakiela (Atticus Books)

• The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka's Civil War
       by Rohini Mohan  (Verso)

• A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps: My Mother's Memories of Imprisonment, Immigration, and a Life Remade
       by Barbara Rylko-Bauer (University of Oklahoma Press)

• Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape
       by Lauret Savoy (Counterpoint)

• Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War
       by Susan Southard (Viking)

• There Was and There Was Not
       by Meline Toumani (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co.)

• The Bosnia List: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Return
       by Kenan Trebin?evi? and Susan Shapiro (Penguin Books)

• Crossing the Line: A Marriage Across Borders
       by Linda Valdez (TCU Press)

The awards are intended to encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan literary legacy of originality, vitality and stylistic innovation. The Saroyan Prize recognizes newly published works of both fiction and non-fiction. A prize of $5,000 will be awarded in each category. Winners and finalists will be announced this summer.

This year's distinguished judging panel for fiction consists of award-winning authors Sumbul Ali-Karamali, Heidi Durrow and Elizabeth McKenzie. The non-fiction panel includes musician and bibliophile Fritz Kasten; Hank Saroyan, writer, performer, and nephew of William Saroyan; and the Barron Park Book Group. More information on our judges can be found here.

"The prize provides a great opportunity to learn about and engage with remarkable emerging authors, all while highlighting the talents of Saroyan himself," said Michael A. Keller, university librarian at Stanford.

Stanford Libraries holds The Saroyan Prize every other year and in 2014 named winners Kiese Laymon (Long Division, Agate Bolden, 2013) for fiction and Margalit Fox (The Riddle of the Labyrinth, HarperCollins Publishers, 2013) for the non-fiction category.

Literary fiction, including novels, short story collections, and drama, are eligible for the Saroyan Fiction Prize. Literary non-fiction of any length is eligible for the Saroyan Non-fiction Prize, most particularly writing in the Saroyan tradition: memoirs, portraits and excursions into neighborhood and community. Entries in either category are limited to English language publications that are available for individual purchase by the general public.

William Saroyan, an American writer and playwright, is a Pulitzer Prize and Academy Award winner best known for his short stories about humorous experiences of immigrant families and children in California. Much of Saroyan's other work is clearly autobiographical, although similar in style and technique to fiction. Saroyan was the fourth child of Armenian immigrants. He battled his way through poverty and rose to literary prominence in the early 1930s when national magazines began publishing his short stories, such as The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze, My Name Is Aram, Inhale & Exhale, Three Times Three, and Peace, It's Wonderful. Saroyan soon moved on to writing plays for Broadway and screenplays for Hollywood, including: My Heart's in the Highlands, The Time of Your Life, The Beautiful People, and The Human Comedy.

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Contact: Sonia Lee
650-736-9538 (office)
sonialee@stanford.edu

Monday, May 2, 2016