Minnow Makes Crook's Corner Prize List

The Crook’s Corner Book Prize has announced its annual Longlist for best debut novel set in the American South.

James McTeer’s Minnow, published by Hub City Press, is among the 18 books on the list.

Now in its third year, the prize is open to first-time novelists, whether self-published or backed by major publishing houses. “The Crook’s Corner Book Prize Longlist is a great example of what independent booksellers have been doing for years: identifying top-quality reading experiences, regardless of the book’s origin,” said Jamie Fiocco of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC.

The prize is named for Crook’s Corner, an iconic Southern restaurant with a rich history of supporting the arts. Inspired by the prestigious writers’ prizes awarded for many years by such famous Parisian literary cafés as the Deux Magots and the Café de Flore, the Crook’s Corner Book Prize seeks to highlight new novelists enriching the literary tradition of the American South. “At a time when attention has been focused on the South, for better or worse,” noted Anna Hayes, president of the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation, “contemporary authors contribute fresh ways of looking at the region, past and present,”

Finalists will be announced in October. This year’s judge, author Lee Smith, will select the winner, to be announced in January 2016 at Crook’s Corner. The winner will receive not only a cash prize of $1000 but also, in a nod to the literary cafés of Paris that inspired the prize, a free glass of wine at Crook’s Corner every day of the prize year.

Past winners are A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash (selected by Jill McCorkle) and Byrd by Kim Church (selected by Randall Kenan).