Awards 2025 lifetime

George Saunders is the author of 13 books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Booker Prize; five collections of stories including Tenth of December, a Finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the inaugural Folio Prize, and Liberation Day.  He is the host of the popular Substack blog, Story Club, an outgrowth of his book on the Russian short story A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.  In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by TIME Magazine. Since 1996, he has taught creative writing at Syracuse University. His new novel, Vigil, is forthcoming.

Roxane Gay’s writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, and Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel Comics. She has several books forthcoming, television and film projects, and a newsletter, The Audacity.