August 22, 2024 | David Jordan
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster (Harper, 2023), a novel by Mirinae Lee, and Orphan Bachelors(Grove Press, 2023), a memoir by Fae Myenne Ng, are the newly published books chosen to receive the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing administered by Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation. The biennial prize honors the life and legacy of novelist, playwright, and short-story author William Saroyan by encouraging and celebrating the works of new and emerging writers.
University Librarian Michael A. Keller announced awards of $5,000 to each winner and remarked, “Both of these outstanding books offer fascinating cultural insights at the person-to-person level otherwise very difficult to perceive.”
Mirinae Lee, winner in the fiction category for her first novel, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster, lives in Hong Kong and has previously published short fiction in several notable literary periodicals. Inspired by the story of Lee’s great aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, the novel’s protagonist spins stories of life in the demilitarized zone at the border of North and South Korea and in other conflict-ridden settings.
The Saroyan Prize fiction judges said: “Lee's characters are so fascinating and complicated that the need to decipher them and unravel their mysteries generates unexpected suspense and a desire to rush toward the answers, but her lyrical and evocative prose simultaneously demands a slow savoring of each page. A beautifully complex story of human frailty and strength.”
The finalists in fiction were A Down Home Meal for these Difficult Times (Restless Books, 2022) by Meron Hadero and Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Tin House, 2022) by Kim Fu. Each book is a compilation of short stories, the former about immigrants and refugees finding new homes and the latter about building fantastic new worlds in modern times.
Fae Myenne Ng, winner in the nonfiction category for Orphan Bachelors, is an author of short fiction and two award-winning novels and has written this memoir of her family’s life in San Francisco’s Chinatown and of her father’s struggles to secure citizenship. Subtitled “On Being a Confession Baby, Chinatown Daughter, Baa-Bai Sister, Caretaker of Exotics, Literary Balloon Peddler, and Grand Historian of a Doomed American Family,” the memoir spans generations.
The Saroyan Prize nonfiction judges said: “Beautiful, poetic, with astonishing leaps in time and place, this book stood out for its experimental structure and raw honesty. A ‘book of living memory,’ Orphan Bachelors focuses on the effects of U.S. immigration laws, specifically the Exclusion Act. This is a book about absences and secrets and what is lost in families when silence is the norm. Built on segmented memories, on deciphering family lies from truth, on balancing history with the author’s place in a world that is and is not home, Orphan Bachelors is a brilliant narrative of the immigrant experience, told through the lens of a writer who knows how to weave fragments into whole cloth.”
The finalists in nonfiction were Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt (Grove Atlantic, 2022) by Phoebe Zerwick and I Would Meet You Anywhere (Mad Creek Books, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press, 2023) by Susan Kiyo Ito. The former is about a falsely incarcerated man exonerated eighteen years later by DNA evidence, and the latter about a woman’s relationship with her long-absent birth mother and the legacy of the Japanese American incarceration experience during World War II.
This year’s panel of distinguished Saroyan Prize judges comprised Sumbul Ali-Karamali, Elizabeth McKenzie and Scott Setrakian for fiction and Mark Arax, Lori Jakiela and Fritz Kasten for nonfiction. The six judges, including three Stanford alumni, two former Saroyan Prize winners, and the President of the William Saroyan Foundation, are themselves the authors of numerous award-winning books and other creative productions. Nearly 250 additional volunteers, primarily members of the Stanford Alumni Association, read the entries and provided initial evaluations to the judging committee.
“We are especially thankful to the volunteer readers and judges, both new and returning, who make the Saroyan Prize possible,” Keller said. “Characters and circumstances reminiscent of Saroyan’s depictions of Armenian Americans revealed his lasting influence in many of the nearly 320 entries. The finalists and winners stood out for their superb storytelling abilities, as did one of California’s and our nation’s greatest writers, William Saroyan.”