The University of Arizona Press
April 20, 2023
Reyes Ramirez has been named one of the five finalists for the 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award for The Book of Wanderers.
Established in 2001, The New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award is a $10,000 prize awarded each spring to a writer age 35 or younger for a novel or a collection of short stories. Each year, five young fiction writers are selected as finalists by a reading committee of Young Lions members, writers, editors, and librarians. A panel of judges selects the winner.
The winner will be announced at a ceremony and celebration in New York on Thursday, June 15. Reyes Ramirez and his guests will be in attendance. The other finalists are: Fatimah Asghar for When We Were Sisters; Elaine Hsieh Chou for Disorientation; Zain Khalid for Brother Alive; and David Sanchez for All Day Is A Long Time. Part of the ceremony is having celebrities and influencers read an excerpt from each of the five finalists.
Congratulations Reyes!
About the book:
What do a family of luchadores, a teen on the run, a rideshare driver, a lucid dreamer, a migrant worker in space, a mecha soldier, and a zombie-and-neo-Nazi fighter have in common?
Reyes Ramirez’s dynamic short story collection follows new lineages of Mexican and Salvadoran diasporas traversing life in Houston, across borders, and even on Mars. Themes of wandering weave throughout each story, bringing feelings of unease and liberation as characters navigate cultural, physical, and psychological separation and loss from one generation to the next in a tumultuous nation.
The Book of Wanderers deeply explores Houston, a Gulf Coast metropolis that incorporates Southern, Western, and Southwestern identities near the borderlands with a connection to the cosmos.
