Adam Haslett ‘92 and Joe McGinniss Jr. ‘94 are finalists for the 2016 Kirkus Prize for their recently published works of fiction, Imagine Me Gone and Carousel Court, respectively.

The Kirkus Prize is a literary award given every year to three writers, one each from the fields of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature. Each winner receives $50,000 to recognize “outstanding literary achievements” and encourage further work.

Kirkus describes Imagine Me Gone as a "touching chronicle of love and pain that traces half a century in a family of five from the parents’ engagement in 1963 through a father’s and son’s psychological torments." In addition to Imagine Me Gone, Haslett has published a short story collection,You Are Not a Stranger Here, and the novel Union Atlantic. You Are Not a Stranger Here was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, while Union Atlantic earned Haslett the Lambda Literary Award. In February, Haslett received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Strauss Living Award. After receiving his B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore, he went on to earn an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa and a J.D. from Yale Law School. 

Kirkus calls Carousel Court “a novel of unrelenting tension,” stating that “McGinniss . . . injects it with an urgency, a sense of constant, inescapable threat that all adds up to a taut page-turner.” The novel also received praise from Publishers Weekly and a starred review from Booklist. McGinniss Jr. has published a novel, The Delivery Man, as well as Carousel Court. He received a B.A. in political science from Swarthmore and a master’s degree in public policy from American University. 

The winners of the Kirkus Prize will be announced on November 3rd.