The Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award is an annual literary prize presented by Barnes & Noble for author's debut books.
It was founded with the aim of recognizing and celebrating exceptional emerging authors who demonstrate outstanding talent and promise in their writing.
Early versions of the award were presented as two awards, one for fiction and one for nonfiction, with second and third place recipients. More recent editions present a single award winner with a list of finalists.
Year | Category | Author | Title | Result | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1995 | Fiction | Chang-rae Lee | Native Speaker | Won | [1] |
1996 | Fiction | Elizabeth McCracken | The Giant's House | Won | [1] |
Nonfiction | Anthony Doerr | The Shell Collector | Won | [1] | |
1997 | Fiction | J. Robert Lennon | The Light of Falling Stars | 1 | [2] |
2001 | Fiction | Manil Suri | The Death of Vishnu | 1 | [3] |
2004 | Fiction | Monica Ali | Brick Lane | 1 | [4] |
Zoë Heller | What Was She Thinking? | 2 | [4] | ||
Julie Orringer | How to Breath Underwater | 3 | [4] | ||
Nonfiction | Jay Griffiths | A Sideways Look at Time | 1 | [4] | |
Christina Lamb | The Sewing Circles of Herat | 2 | [4] | ||
Floyd Skloot | In the Shadow of Memory | 3 | [4] | ||
2005 | Fiction | Uzodinma Iweala | Beasts of No Nation | 1 | [5] [6] |
Kitty Fitzgerald | Pigtopia | 2 | [5] [6] | ||
Catherine Tudish | Tenney's Landing | 3 | [5] [6] | ||
Nonfiction | Nathaniel Fick | One Bullet Away | 1 | [5] [6] | |
Martin Moran | The Tricky Part | 2 | [5] [6] | ||
Louise Brown | The Dancing Girls of Lahore | 3 | [5] [6] | ||
2006 | Fiction | Ben Fountain | Brief Encounters with Che Guevara | 1 | [7] |
O. Z. Livaneli | Bliss | 2 | [7] | ||
Sam Savage | Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife | 3 | [7] | ||
Nonfiction | Eric Blehm | The Last Season | 1 | [7] | |
Daniel Mendelsohn | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million | 2 | [7] | ||
Marilyn Johnson | The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries | 3 | [7] | ||
2007 | Fiction | Joshua Ferris | Then We Came to the End | 1 | [8] [9] |
Matthew Eck | The Farther Shore | 2 | [8] | ||
Vendela Vida | Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name | 3 | [8] | ||
Nonfiction | Kate Braestrup | Here If You Need Me | 1 | [8] [9] | |
Elizabeth Samet | Soldier's Heart | 2 | [8] | ||
Yaroslav Trofimov | The Siege of Mecca | 3 | [8] | ||
2008 | Fiction | Gin Phillips | The Well and the Mine | 1 | [10] [11] |
Benjamin Taylor | The Book of Getting Even | 2 | [10] [11] | ||
Zachary Lazar | Sway | 3 | [10] [11] | ||
Nonfiction | David Sheff | Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction | 1 | [10] [11] | |
Eric Weiner | The Geography of Bliss | 2 | [10] [11] | ||
Nia Wyn | Blue Sky July | 3 | [10] [11] | ||
2009 | Fiction | Victor Lodato | Mathilda Savitch | 1 | [12] [13] |
Barbara Johnson | More of this World or Maybe Another | 2 | [12] [13] | ||
C. E. Morgan | All the Living | 3 | [12] [13] | ||
Nonfiction | Dave Cullen | Columbine | 1 | [12] [13] | |
Toby Lester | The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map | 2 | [12] [13] | ||
Neil White | In the Sanctuary of Outcasts | 3 | [12] [13] | ||
2010 | Fiction | Kim Echlin | The Disappeared | 1 | [14] [15] |
Eric Puchner | Model Home | 2 | [14] [15] | ||
Nic Pizzolatto | Galveston | 3 | [14] [15] | ||
Nonfiction | David R. Dow | The Autobiography of an Execution | 1 | [14] [15] | |
Rebecca Skloot | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | 2 | [14] [15] | ||
Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | 3 | [14] [15] | ||
2011 | Fiction | Scott O'Connor | Untouchable | 1 | [16] [17] |
Alice LaPlante | Turn of Mind | 2 | [16] [17] | ||
Alan Heathcock | Volt | 3 | [16] [17] | ||
Nonfiction | Michael Levy | Kosher Chinese | 1 | [16] [17] | |
Annia Ciezadlo | Day of Honey | 2 | [16] [17] | ||
Joshua Cody | [sic] | 3 | [16] [17] | ||
2012 | Fiction | Amanda Coplin | The Orchardist | 1 | [18] [19] |
Karen Thompson Walker | The Age of Miracles | 2 | [18] [19] | ||
Eowyn Ivey | The Snow Child | 3 | [18] [19] | ||
Nonfiction | Cheryl Strayed | Wild | 1 | [18] [19] | |
Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers | 2 | [18] [19] | ||
Kristen Iversen | Full Body Burden | 3 | [18] [19] | ||
2013 | Fiction | Anthony Marra | A Constellation of Vital Phenomena | 1 | [20] |
NoViolet Bulawayo | We Need New Names | 2 | [20] | ||
Rebecca Lee | Bobcat and Other Stories | 3 | [20] | ||
Nonfiction | Justin St. Germain | Son of a Gun | 1 | [20] | |
Sonali Deraniyagala | Wave | 2 | [20] | ||
Domenica Ruta | With or Without You | 3 | [20] | ||
2014 | Fiction | Evie Wyld | All the Birds, Singing | 1 | [21] [22] |
Molly Antopol | The UnAmericans | 2 | [21] [22] | ||
Arna Bontemps Hemenway | Elegy on Kinderklavier | 3 | [21] [22] | ||
Nonfiction | Bryce Andrews | Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West | 1 | [21] [22] | |
Caitlin Doughty | Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory | 2 | [21] [22] | ||
Will Harlan | Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island | 3 | [21] [22] | ||
2015 | Fiction | Mia Alvar | In the Country | 1 | [23] [24] |
Angela Flournoy | The Turner House | 2 | [23] [24] | ||
Sophie McManus | The Unfortunates | 3 | [23] [24] | ||
Nonfiction | Jill Leovy | Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America | 1 | [23] [24] | |
George Hodgman | Bettyville | 2 | [23] [24] | ||
Amy Ellis Nutt | Becoming Nicole | 3 | [23] [24] | ||
2016 | Fiction | Abby Geni | The Lightkeepers | 1 | [25] |
Yaa Gyasi | Homegoing | 2 | [25] | ||
Jung Yun | Shelter | 3 | [25] [26] | ||
Nonfiction | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | 1 | [25] | |
Hope Jahren | Lab Girl | 2 | [25] | ||
Patrick Phillips | Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America | 3 | [25] | ||
2017 | Fiction | Patty Yumi Cottrell | Sorry to Disrupt the Peace | 1 | [27] |
Megan Hunter | The End We Start From | 2 | [27] | ||
Lisa Ko | The Leavers | 3 | [27] | ||
Nonfiction | Jessica Bruder | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | 1 | [27] | |
Leah Carroll | Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory and Murder | 2 | [27] | ||
Michael Twitty | The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South | 3 | [27] | ||
2018 | Fiction | Paul Howarth | Only Killers and Thieves | 1 | [28] [29] [30] |
Tommy Orange | There There | 2 | [28] [30] | ||
Fatima Farheen Mirza | A Place for Us | 3 | [28] [30] | ||
Nonfiction | Kiese Laymon | Heavy | 1 | [28] [29] [30] | |
Shane Bauer | American Prison | 2 | [28] [30] | ||
Tara Westover | Educated | 3 | [28] [30] | ||
2019 | Fiction | Claire Adam | The Golden Child | Won | [31] [32] |
Lydia Fitzpatrick | Lights All Night Long | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Ocean Vuong | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Regina Porter | The Travelers | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Nonfiction | Damon Young | What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker | Won | [31] [32] | |
Ocean Vuong | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Saeed Jones | How We Fight for Our Lives | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Jaquira Díaz | Ordinary Girls | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Jia Tolentino | Trick Mirror | Shortlisted | [32] |
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2022 | Tess Gunty | The Rabbit Hutch | Won | [33] |
John Manuel Arias | Where There Was Fire | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Alice Winn | In Memoriam | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Brinda Charry | The East Indian | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Henry Hoke | Open Throat | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah | Chain-Gang All-Stars | Shortlisted | [33] | |
2023 | Amanda Peters | The Berry Pickers | Won | [33] |
Louise Kennedy | Tresspasses | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Sequoia Nagamatsu | How High We Go in the Dark | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Morgan Talty | Night of the Living Rez | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Sarah Thankam Mathews | All This Could Be Different | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Laura Warrell | Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Donna Tartt | The Secret History | Shortlisted | [33] |
The Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award is an annual literary prize presented by Barnes & Noble for author's debut books.
It was founded with the aim of recognizing and celebrating exceptional emerging authors who demonstrate outstanding talent and promise in their writing.
Early versions of the award were presented as two awards, one for fiction and one for nonfiction, with second and third place recipients. More recent editions present a single award winner with a list of finalists.
Year | Category | Author | Title | Result | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1995 | Fiction | Chang-rae Lee | Native Speaker | Won | [1] |
1996 | Fiction | Elizabeth McCracken | The Giant's House | Won | [1] |
Nonfiction | Anthony Doerr | The Shell Collector | Won | [1] | |
1997 | Fiction | J. Robert Lennon | The Light of Falling Stars | 1 | [2] |
2001 | Fiction | Manil Suri | The Death of Vishnu | 1 | [3] |
2004 | Fiction | Monica Ali | Brick Lane | 1 | [4] |
Zoë Heller | What Was She Thinking? | 2 | [4] | ||
Julie Orringer | How to Breath Underwater | 3 | [4] | ||
Nonfiction | Jay Griffiths | A Sideways Look at Time | 1 | [4] | |
Christina Lamb | The Sewing Circles of Herat | 2 | [4] | ||
Floyd Skloot | In the Shadow of Memory | 3 | [4] | ||
2005 | Fiction | Uzodinma Iweala | Beasts of No Nation | 1 | [5] [6] |
Kitty Fitzgerald | Pigtopia | 2 | [5] [6] | ||
Catherine Tudish | Tenney's Landing | 3 | [5] [6] | ||
Nonfiction | Nathaniel Fick | One Bullet Away | 1 | [5] [6] | |
Martin Moran | The Tricky Part | 2 | [5] [6] | ||
Louise Brown | The Dancing Girls of Lahore | 3 | [5] [6] | ||
2006 | Fiction | Ben Fountain | Brief Encounters with Che Guevara | 1 | [7] |
O. Z. Livaneli | Bliss | 2 | [7] | ||
Sam Savage | Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife | 3 | [7] | ||
Nonfiction | Eric Blehm | The Last Season | 1 | [7] | |
Daniel Mendelsohn | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million | 2 | [7] | ||
Marilyn Johnson | The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries | 3 | [7] | ||
2007 | Fiction | Joshua Ferris | Then We Came to the End | 1 | [8] [9] |
Matthew Eck | The Farther Shore | 2 | [8] | ||
Vendela Vida | Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name | 3 | [8] | ||
Nonfiction | Kate Braestrup | Here If You Need Me | 1 | [8] [9] | |
Elizabeth Samet | Soldier's Heart | 2 | [8] | ||
Yaroslav Trofimov | The Siege of Mecca | 3 | [8] | ||
2008 | Fiction | Gin Phillips | The Well and the Mine | 1 | [10] [11] |
Benjamin Taylor | The Book of Getting Even | 2 | [10] [11] | ||
Zachary Lazar | Sway | 3 | [10] [11] | ||
Nonfiction | David Sheff | Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction | 1 | [10] [11] | |
Eric Weiner | The Geography of Bliss | 2 | [10] [11] | ||
Nia Wyn | Blue Sky July | 3 | [10] [11] | ||
2009 | Fiction | Victor Lodato | Mathilda Savitch | 1 | [12] [13] |
Barbara Johnson | More of this World or Maybe Another | 2 | [12] [13] | ||
C. E. Morgan | All the Living | 3 | [12] [13] | ||
Nonfiction | Dave Cullen | Columbine | 1 | [12] [13] | |
Toby Lester | The Fourth Part of the World: The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map | 2 | [12] [13] | ||
Neil White | In the Sanctuary of Outcasts | 3 | [12] [13] | ||
2010 | Fiction | Kim Echlin | The Disappeared | 1 | [14] [15] |
Eric Puchner | Model Home | 2 | [14] [15] | ||
Nic Pizzolatto | Galveston | 3 | [14] [15] | ||
Nonfiction | David R. Dow | The Autobiography of an Execution | 1 | [14] [15] | |
Rebecca Skloot | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | 2 | [14] [15] | ||
Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | 3 | [14] [15] | ||
2011 | Fiction | Scott O'Connor | Untouchable | 1 | [16] [17] |
Alice LaPlante | Turn of Mind | 2 | [16] [17] | ||
Alan Heathcock | Volt | 3 | [16] [17] | ||
Nonfiction | Michael Levy | Kosher Chinese | 1 | [16] [17] | |
Annia Ciezadlo | Day of Honey | 2 | [16] [17] | ||
Joshua Cody | [sic] | 3 | [16] [17] | ||
2012 | Fiction | Amanda Coplin | The Orchardist | 1 | [18] [19] |
Karen Thompson Walker | The Age of Miracles | 2 | [18] [19] | ||
Eowyn Ivey | The Snow Child | 3 | [18] [19] | ||
Nonfiction | Cheryl Strayed | Wild | 1 | [18] [19] | |
Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers | 2 | [18] [19] | ||
Kristen Iversen | Full Body Burden | 3 | [18] [19] | ||
2013 | Fiction | Anthony Marra | A Constellation of Vital Phenomena | 1 | [20] |
NoViolet Bulawayo | We Need New Names | 2 | [20] | ||
Rebecca Lee | Bobcat and Other Stories | 3 | [20] | ||
Nonfiction | Justin St. Germain | Son of a Gun | 1 | [20] | |
Sonali Deraniyagala | Wave | 2 | [20] | ||
Domenica Ruta | With or Without You | 3 | [20] | ||
2014 | Fiction | Evie Wyld | All the Birds, Singing | 1 | [21] [22] |
Molly Antopol | The UnAmericans | 2 | [21] [22] | ||
Arna Bontemps Hemenway | Elegy on Kinderklavier | 3 | [21] [22] | ||
Nonfiction | Bryce Andrews | Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West | 1 | [21] [22] | |
Caitlin Doughty | Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory | 2 | [21] [22] | ||
Will Harlan | Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island | 3 | [21] [22] | ||
2015 | Fiction | Mia Alvar | In the Country | 1 | [23] [24] |
Angela Flournoy | The Turner House | 2 | [23] [24] | ||
Sophie McManus | The Unfortunates | 3 | [23] [24] | ||
Nonfiction | Jill Leovy | Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America | 1 | [23] [24] | |
George Hodgman | Bettyville | 2 | [23] [24] | ||
Amy Ellis Nutt | Becoming Nicole | 3 | [23] [24] | ||
2016 | Fiction | Abby Geni | The Lightkeepers | 1 | [25] |
Yaa Gyasi | Homegoing | 2 | [25] | ||
Jung Yun | Shelter | 3 | [25] [26] | ||
Nonfiction | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | 1 | [25] | |
Hope Jahren | Lab Girl | 2 | [25] | ||
Patrick Phillips | Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America | 3 | [25] | ||
2017 | Fiction | Patty Yumi Cottrell | Sorry to Disrupt the Peace | 1 | [27] |
Megan Hunter | The End We Start From | 2 | [27] | ||
Lisa Ko | The Leavers | 3 | [27] | ||
Nonfiction | Jessica Bruder | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | 1 | [27] | |
Leah Carroll | Down City: A Daughter's Story of Love, Memory and Murder | 2 | [27] | ||
Michael Twitty | The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South | 3 | [27] | ||
2018 | Fiction | Paul Howarth | Only Killers and Thieves | 1 | [28] [29] [30] |
Tommy Orange | There There | 2 | [28] [30] | ||
Fatima Farheen Mirza | A Place for Us | 3 | [28] [30] | ||
Nonfiction | Kiese Laymon | Heavy | 1 | [28] [29] [30] | |
Shane Bauer | American Prison | 2 | [28] [30] | ||
Tara Westover | Educated | 3 | [28] [30] | ||
2019 | Fiction | Claire Adam | The Golden Child | Won | [31] [32] |
Lydia Fitzpatrick | Lights All Night Long | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Ocean Vuong | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Regina Porter | The Travelers | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Nonfiction | Damon Young | What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker | Won | [31] [32] | |
Ocean Vuong | On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Saeed Jones | How We Fight for Our Lives | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Jaquira Díaz | Ordinary Girls | Shortlisted | [32] | ||
Jia Tolentino | Trick Mirror | Shortlisted | [32] |
Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2022 | Tess Gunty | The Rabbit Hutch | Won | [33] |
John Manuel Arias | Where There Was Fire | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Alice Winn | In Memoriam | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Brinda Charry | The East Indian | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Henry Hoke | Open Throat | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah | Chain-Gang All-Stars | Shortlisted | [33] | |
2023 | Amanda Peters | The Berry Pickers | Won | [33] |
Louise Kennedy | Tresspasses | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Sequoia Nagamatsu | How High We Go in the Dark | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Morgan Talty | Night of the Living Rez | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Sarah Thankam Mathews | All This Could Be Different | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Laura Warrell | Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm | Shortlisted | [33] | |
Donna Tartt | The Secret History | Shortlisted | [33] |