Submissions: Open | Deadline May 15, 2024

Crooks Corner Book Prize 11th Annual Longlist Announced

Winner Announced for the 7th Annual Crook’s Corner Book Prize

January 7, 2020

DEVI S. LASKAR, CHAPEL HILL NATIVE, WINS $5000 CROOK’S CORNER BOOK PRIZE

Chapel Hill, NC, January 6, 2020—Devi S. Laskar’s The Atlas of Reds and Blues, published by Counterpoint Press, is the winner of the seventh annual Crook’s Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the American South.

This year’s judge was National Book Award-winning author Charles Frazier, who says, “I loved the very focused and concise ideas and dramatic situation, the efficient and effective structure, the strong and precise language.”

The Atlas of Reds and Blues grapples with the complexities of second-generation American life. Inspired by the author’s own terrifying experience of a mistaken police raid on her home, Devi S. Laskar’s debut novel explores, in spare and powerful prose, the ways in which racism permeates and pollutes the American dream. As the protagonist, known only as Mother, lies bleeding from a police gunshot wound in her Atlanta driveway, she revisits, in a time-bending mind-flash, her life as the successful child of immigrants from India, wife of a successful white businessman, and mother of three daughters.

Laskar is a native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and holds an MFA from Columbia University. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is an alumna of The OpEd Project and VONA. The Atlas of Reds and Blues is her first novel. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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 details, see the Submission Guidelines.
Media contact: Cindy Hamel, cindyhsellars@gmail.com, 917-544-1793.

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11TH ANNUAL BOOK PRIZE WINNER

The Old Place
by Bobby Finger
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11th Annual Announcement Party

2024 Announcement Party at The Crunkleton— Winner Bobby Finger with this year’s judge Wiley Cash and CCBP president Anna Hayes

11th Annual Readers' Party

Author Jill McCorkle and Algonquin Books co-founder Shannon Ravenel join CCBP Readers attending this year’s Thank You party.

10th Annual Virtual Announcement Party

WATCH REPLAY HERE

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THE 10TH ANNUAL SHORTLIST

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HOSTED BY

THE 10TH ANNUAL BOOK PRIZE JUDGE

Ben Fountain was born in Chapel Hill and grew up in eastern North Carolina. His most recent book is Beautiful Country Burn Again, a narrative, with history, of the 2016 presidential election. He is also the author of the novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which was adapted for film by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, and the short story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.
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LIBRARY PANEL

THE 2022 BOOK PRIZE JUDGE

Ron Rash is the author of the PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to the critically acclaimed novels The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight…
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THE 2020 BOOK PRIZE WINNER

Atlas of Reds and Blues

by Devi S. Laskar
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