Kirkus Prize 2016: Complete list of winners

The 2016 Kirkus Prize honored three works that exemplify the best in contemporary American literature, rewarding the kind of ambitious writing that challenges readers and expands what’s possible on the page. The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan claimed the fiction prize, a sprawling, multigenerational novel that tackles race, power, and the American South through the world of thoroughbred horse racing. Morgan’s debut is a work of considerable scope and moral complexity, the sort of literary achievement that the Kirkus Prize has long championed.

The nonfiction winner, Susan Faludi’s In the Darkroom, is an intensely personal yet politically urgent investigation into gender, identity, and family secrets spanning continents and decades. Faludi brings her trademark investigative rigor to bear on deeply intimate material, creating a work that resonates far beyond memoir. Meanwhile, Jason Reynolds’s As Brave as You took the Young Readers’ Literature prize, a verse novel about two African American brothers navigating adolescence, family expectations, and their own courage. Reynolds’s accessible yet artful approach to verse has made him a vital voice in contemporary young adult literature.

What strikes you about this year’s lineup is how each winner grapples with identity and inheritance in distinctly American contexts. Here are the complete details about the 2016 Kirkus Prize winners:

Fiction

• The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan

Nonfiction

• In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi

Young Readers’ Literature

• As Brave as You by Jason Reynolds