At turns joyful and heartbreaking, Stone Fruit reveals through intimately naturalistic dialog and blue-hued watercolor how painful it can be to truly become vulnerable to your loved ones — and how fulfilling it is to be finally understood for who you are. More about this book >

• HONOREE 5 Under 35 2021 >

  Selected by Bryan Washington >

  Bryan Washington

  

  Bryan Washington is the author of the story collection Lot and the novels Memorial and Family Meal. A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, he is the winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, two Lambda Literary Awards, and was featured in the O. Henry Prize Stories in 2019. He has been a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Times, his writing has also appeared in Granta, the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, TIME Magazine, GQ, and Esquire, among many other places. He is based in Tokyo. (Photo credit: Cydney Cosette)