2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize Shortlists Announced

The shortlists for the 2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, presented by the Brooklyn Eagles, have been announced. The prize recognizes "works that question established ways of thinking and advance Brooklyn Public Library's mission of bringing together the borough's diverse communities to explore urgent social, political, and artistic issues." The shortlist selections are as follows:

Fiction and Poetry

• Exit West: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead Books)
• What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky: Stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead Books)
• IRL by Tommy Pico (Birds)

Non-Fiction

• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (Doubleday)
• Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein (Metropolitan Books)
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (Liveright Publishing)

The final winners will be selected by a panel of judges that includes BPL librarians from over a dozen branches as well as poet Claudia Rankine, novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt, Simon Critchley of the New York Times and the New School, Columbia professor James Shapiro, novelist Imbolo Mbue, and Columbia professor Jack Halberstam. Click here for more information.