Geraldine Brooks will receive the 2025 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the institution announced in a news release. The annual award “honors an American literary writer whose body of work is distinguished by not only its mastery of the art, but also its originality of thought and imagination.”
Brooks, who was born and raised in Australia, moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s to attend graduate school in journalism at Columbia University. She worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal before publishing her first book, a work of nonfiction titled Nine Parts of Desire, in 1994.
She made her fiction debut in 2001 with Year of Wonders, and has gone on to publish novels including March, which won the Pulitzer Prize, People of the Book, Caleb’s Crossing, The Secret Chord, and Horse.
Robert Randolph Newlen, the Acting Librarian of Congress, said in a statement, “One of the reasons we invited Geraldine Brooks to become the next Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction winner is how she makes readers feel. She invites readers into her narratives with such grace and infectious energy and helps us understand the lives of characters who might have lived in other times and other places.”
Brooks reacted to the honor, saying, “As a writer inspired by history, it is moving to be connected by the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction to the institution created by John Adams for the very first Congress, saved by Thomas Jefferson after the conflagration of 1812, and carried into the present by visionary librarians who value inclusion, free expression and truth.”
The Library of Congress Prize was established in 2009. Previous winners include Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Richard Ford, and James McBride.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
