The Center for Fiction 2014 First Novel Prize (then called the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize) was awarded to Tiphanie Yanique for her debut novel Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead Books). Read about Land of Love and Drowning below and browse 2014’s shortlisted and longlisted titles.
This annual award was created in 2006 to honor the best first novel of the year. Debut novels published between January 1 and December 31 of the award year are eligible. The winner is announced in December at our Annual Awards Benefit.
Winner
- Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique (Riverhead Books)
Shortlist
- The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld (Harper)
- Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson (Ecco)
- The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil (Grove Press)
- The Invention of Exile by Vanessa Manko (The Penguin Press)
- The Land of Steady Habits by Ted Thompson (Little Brown and Company)
- We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas (Simon & Schuster)
Longlist
- The Anatomy of Dreams by Chloe Krug Benjamin (Atria Books)
- An Untamed State by Roxane Gay (Black Cat)
- Byrd by Kim Church (Dzanc Books)
- Cementville by Paulette Livers (Counterpoint)
- The End of Always by Randi Davenport (Twelve)
- For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- The Girls from Corona Del Mar by Rufi Thorpe (Knopf)
- The Kept by James Scott (Harper)
- Life Drawing by Robin Black (Random House)
- Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah (Sarah Crichton Books)
- Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston (Random House)
- Ruby by Cynthia Bond (Hogarth)
- Saint Monkey by Jacinda Townsend (W.W. Norton & Company)
- Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler (Thomas Dunne Books)
- The Sixteenth of June by Maya Lang (Scribner)
- The Visionist by Rachel Urquhart (Little Brown and Company)
- What Ends by Andrew Ladd (New Issues Poetry & Prose)
- The Word Exchange by Alena Gradeon (Doubleday Books)
- Young God by Katherine Faw Morris (FSG)
2014 Winner
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Land of Love and Drowning
By Tiphanie Yanique
Published by Riverhead Books
Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the political emergence of St. Thomas into an American territory. Wholly unique, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the author’s own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evokes an entire world and way of life and love.