On June 7th, The New Yorker will release an issue highlighting the best American authors under 40. Yes, it’s an arbitrary cut-off date (sorry, Dave Eggers — you’re 40 + 3 months), but 20 Under 40 sounds so much better than 20 Under A-Vague-Stage-In-Middle-Age-Before-Getting-Old. It’s a marketing ploy, people, get over it.
The Observer reports that 8-9 stories will be published in that June 7th issue, and the rest of the winners will be published in the following weeks.
HTML Giant has a prediction pool going on with great swag packages, so put in your guesses there. (for help with demographic breakdown, see Treisman’s article.)
Here are my best guesses. All my loyal and intelligent readers, I’d love to hear what I’ve left off my list or what I should have left off.
- Daniel Alarcon
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Joshua Ferris
- Maile Meloy
- Miranda July
- Wells Tower
- Gary Shteyngart
- Josh Weil
- Curtis Sittenfeld
- Nicole Krauss
- Nell Freudenberger
- ZZ Packer
- Karen Russell
- Rivka Galchen
- Kirstin Valdez Quade
- Heather Clay
- Andrew Sean Greer
- Yiyun Li
- Said Sayrafiezadeh
- Akhil Sharma
2 comments
Off the top of my head: Julie Orringer, Aryn Kyle, Benjamin Percy.
I’d love it if Benjamin Percy got it. His work’s incredible. I had him on the longlist but then judged him a long shot.
And excellent call on Kyle and Orringer. You make me want to consider revisions.