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For the first time, two books were awarded the Gotham Book Prize, an annual award for the best new book set in New York City.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana and The Sewing Girl’s Tale by John Wood Sweet won this year's award. The winners, announced yesterday, will split a $70,000 prize.
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The two winning entries were selected from a pool of 11 finalists, ranging from a debut novel set in 1990s Harlem to a love story in post-WWII New York to a noir mystery in mid-2000s Brooklyn. A jury of authors and esteemed New Yorkers selected the winners.
In Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, Fofana’s narrative focuses on the interconnected lives within one apartment building in Harlem—from the friendships to the rivalries—as the clock of gentrification ticks louder than ever. Meanwhile, The Sewing Girl’s Tale is a historical drama of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermaths.
The Gotham Book Prize is awarded annually to the best book published that calendar year—either fiction or nonfiction—that either is about New York City or takes place in New York City. Previous winners include Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott (2022) and Deacon King Kong by James McBride (2021).
Those previous winning books sit on Fofana's bookshelf, and he said it's "absolutely surreal" to be included among them. "This city is so beautifully intricate, and for the Gotham Prize to include Stories from the Tenants Downstairs in that mosaic is an honor words really cannot do justice to," said Fofana, a public school teacher in Brooklyn.
For Sweet, writing The Sewing Girl’s Tale offered a chance to get to know NYC in new ways. “Around every corner, on each new page, was a mystery or a revelation. Ultimately, this book became an opportunity to tell the story of our nation’s founding era not through the eyes of the so-called Founding Fathers but through the eyes of a young woman of modest circumstances: a seventeen-year-old sewing girl who refused to be silenced, who insisted that she, too, mattered. Hers is a powerful New York story of courage — and its costs,” said Sweet, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
We expect both to be cemented in the canon of great New York City books.
Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson created the Gotham Book Prize in the early days of the pandemic to encourage and honor new works written about the city. Tusk, a venture capitalist, philanthropist and writer, teamed up with Wolfson, who works for Bloomberg Philanthropies, to create the prize as a way to recognize the culture that has made New York City special for generations and to uplift the creative community during the challenges of the pandemic.
The co-creators described the books as "one whose sharp historical inquiry brings to life New York City’s past, and another whose vivid character development captures the voice of New York City today."
"We started the Gotham Book Prize during the pandemic to encourage writers to share unique stories about New York, and both of these books have accomplished exactly this. We expect both to be cemented in the canon of great New York City books," Tusk and Wolfson said in a statement.
Tusk founded P&T Knitwear, a new independent bookstore and free podcast studio, on the Lower East Side last year. He named the store in tribute to a 1950s garment shop operated by his grandfather on Allen Street after surviving the Holocaust and immigrating from a displaced persons camp in Germany.
Signed copies of the winning books can be ordered through P&T Knitwear, where you can also pick up books from the finalists, all listed here.