January 6, 2025

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CONTACT: Cindy Sellars cindyhsellars@gmail.com

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai wins 2025 Crook’s Corner Book Prize
$5,000 prize awarded for best debut novel set in the American South

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, January 6, 2025—Banyan Moon by Thao Thai (Mariner Books) is the winner of the twelfth annual Crook’s Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South.

Selected by this year’s judge, award-winning author Megan Mayhew Bergman, Banyan Moon is a “sweeping, evocative novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family’s inherited burdens, buried secrets, and unlikely love stories.”

Bergman says:

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai is a striking debut novel that will captivate readers with its stunning prose and lush descriptions of the surrounding world. Through the compelling narratives of three generations of Vietnamese American women – who are destabilized by the death of their matriarch – Thai reveals the family’s inherited burdens and secrets in gorgeous sentences and smart dialogue. With deeply developed characters, this incredibly moving book invites us to explore the complex bonds of love and family, making it a deserving selection for the Crooks Corner Book Prize.

The winner was chosen from the Shortlist announced in September 2024. The three shortlisted titles also included Coleman Hill by Kim Foote (SJP Lit) and Fireworks Every Night by Beth Raymer (Penguin Random House).

Thao is also a recipient of the 2024 Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Elle, Lit Hub, and other publications. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and daughter.

The Crook’s Corner Book Prize, established as a collaboration between the iconic Southern restaurant Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation, was inspired by the prestigious book awards long given by famous “literary cafés” in Paris. Submissions are now open for next year’s prize. For more information on the Prize and submission guidelines, please visit www.crookscornerbookprize.com or follow us on Facebook, and Instagram.

January 8, 2024

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kera Yonker, kerayonker@gmail.com

Bobby Finger Wins $5000 Crook’s Corner Book Prize for The Old Place

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, January 8, 2024—The Old Place by Bobby Finger (Penguin Random House) is the winner of the eleventh annual Crook’s Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South.

Selected by this year’s judge Wiley Cash, The Old Place is a bighearted and moving debut about a wry retired schoolteacher whose decade-old secret threatens to come to light and send shockwaves through her small Texas town. Cash says:

Bobby Finger’s novel might be titled The Old Place, but its themes of family, forgiveness, and acceptance are as timely as ever. Like truly timeless literature, Finger’s novel is populated with small-town characters we all know. In this novel, Billington, Texas is its own distinct place, but thanks to Finger’s talented rendering, it quickly becomes a place for all of us to understand ourselves and one another better.

The winner was chosen from the Shortlist announced in September 2023. The three shortlisted titles also included Hestia Strikes a Match by Christine Grillo, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Publishers) and Indigo Field by Marjorie Hudson (Regal House Publishing).

Bobby Finger graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 before moving to New York City, where he worked as a copywriter at an advertising agency before becoming a full-time pop culture writer and podcaster. His bylines have appeared in New York magazine, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. The Old Place was selected by Vanity Fair as one of the best books of 2022. His next novel, Four Squares, is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in June 2024.

The Crook’s Corner Book Prize, established as a collaboration between the iconic Southern restaurant Crook’s Corner, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation, was inspired by the prestigious book awards long given by famous “literary cafés” in Paris. For more information on the Prize and submission guidelines, please visit www.crookscornerbookprize.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.