Announcing the 2025 George Plimpton and Susannah Hunnewell Prizewinners

Photograph of Elijah Bailey courtesy of the author; photograph of Julien Columeau by Valentina Kim; photograph of Sana R. Chaudhry by Virginia Hobbs.

We are delighted to denote that Elijah Bailey volition person this year’s George Plimpton Prize and that Julien Columeau and Sana R. Chaudhry volition person the Susannah Hunnewell Prize. The prizes volition beryllium presented astatine our yearly Spring Revel connected April 1 successful New York, cochaired by Laurie and Oskar Eustis and MCed by Lena Dunham. We’ll besides beryllium honoring Anne Carson with the Hadada, our grant for beingness accomplishment successful literature, which volition beryllium presented by Ben Whishaw. Prizewinners are selected by the editorial committee of the Review’s committee of directors.

The George Plimpton Prize, awarded annually since 1993, honors our founding editor’s committedness to championing caller endowment by recognizing an emerging writer of exceptional merit published successful the mag during the preceding year. Previous recipients see Jesse Ball, Amie Barrodale, Emma Cline, Isabella Hammad, Yiyun Li, and Ottessa Moshfegh.

Elijah Bailey’s communicative “Social Promotion,” published successful contented no. 247 (Spring 2024), follows a miss who performs successful an original, half-improvised schoolhouse play written for her Great Black Women of History class. Bailey was a John and Renée Grisham Fellow successful fabrication astatine the University of Mississippi. The Review’s publisher, Mona Simpson, writes:

“Social Promotion” by Elijah Bailey is laugh-out-loud funny, narrated by Derajanae successful a dependable afloat of comedy, pathos, and joy. She is astatine an awards ceremonial astatine a “last-chance alternate school” successful a erstwhile bureau abstraction with “one of them spinning doors you tin trap radical in,” sitting down her teacher who makes “a bigger woody retired of everything than it is” and adjacent to her parent and babe sister, Racey, who wears a onesie with cars connected it. Derajanae has written a play to beryllium performed astatine the ceremony, but archetypal she has to perceive to a lad who can’t work telephone retired the names of the winners. “Sound it out,” she thinks. “Guess better.” He has yet to accidental her name.

Derajanae got kicked retired of her past schoolhouse “for warring excessively good,” and she’s owed astatine the parkland for a combat close now—but archetypal she has to prima successful her play arsenic Sojourner Truth. “Me and Miss Marie had to compromise connected the play,” she says. “She ain’t privation nary foul connection and nary making airy of violence. During rehearsal she kept pecking astatine it and pecking astatine it until it was lone benignant of mine.” We ticker the play unfold arsenic a raucous farce; naturally, Derajanae manages to marque it much hers. During the applause, she thinks, “I had done thing large and good, and my ears were burning hot.” But the communicative isn’t implicit yet. Keeping the scholar successful what feels similar a gentle suspense until the end, Bailey has the past word, a astonishment that resonates successful layers—it’s archetypal funny, past much and much profound.

Established successful 2023, the Susannah Hunnewell Prize recognizes an outstanding portion of prose oregon poesy published by the Review successful the erstwhile year, and is fixed successful representation of the magazine’s beloved erstwhile publisher, who died successful 2019. Hunnewell archetypal joined the Review arsenic an intern during George Plimpton’s editorship, and aboriginal served arsenic Paris exertion earlier taking connected the relation of publisher. Among her contributions to the mag are immoderate of the finest interviews successful the Writers astatine Work series, including conversations with Emmanuel Carrère, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The prize has antecedently gone to Ishion Hutchinson and Caleb Crain.

In Julien Columeau’s communicative “Derrida successful Lahore,” besides published successful contented no. 247, an aspiring student successful Pakistan becomes a deconstructionist zealot. Born successful France, Columeau has published 5 collections of novellas and abbreviated stories successful Urdu, arsenic good arsenic 2 novels. “Derrida successful Lahore” was translated from the Urdu by Sana R. Chaudhry, who won the 2022 Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation for her translation of Columeau’s communicative “My Dear Teacher.” Of “Derrida successful Lahore,” Simpson writes:

Given the title, readers whitethorn travel to “Derrida successful Lahore” hoping for an autofiction glimpse of the large philosopher (and the communicative won’t disappoint), but agelong aft the French maestro has near Lahore, what lingers is the communicative of 2 young men, educated unneurotic from superior schoolhouse successful the fifteenth-largest metropolis of Pakistan (known for atom production) done assemblage successful Lahore. One, Shahid, is simply a seeker—as a lad helium stays successful the municipal room until closing time; erstwhile he’s driven retired of the assemblage for blasphemy, helium flees to Paris to be Derrida’s lectures. The other, our narrator, follows a much accepted path, returning location to thatch astatine a section precocious school. Shahid’s father, a feudal lord who brags that he’s lone ever work 1 book—the Quran—lures his lad location with a station astatine a Sheikhupura college. The 2 friends reunite astatine a edifice wherever the section literati portion chai, gossip, and grumble. With Derrida looming successful the men’s conversations, Columeau deftly renders provincial intelligence beingness and the hunt for faith, and creates a pitch-perfect sketch of a personage philosopher. His characters telephone to caput William James’s once- and twice-born believers. There are echoes, too, of Joyce’s “A Little Cloud,” successful its bittersweet opposition of profoundly superior survey with smaller, regular pleasures.

Simpson serves connected the editorial committee that selects the prizewinners, on with committee directors Kwame Anthony Appiah, William Beekman, Jeffrey Eugenides, Stephen Gaghan, Radhika Jones, Jeanne McCulloch, John McWhorter, Ileene Smith, and Antonio Weiss.

Tickets are inactive disposable for the Spring Revel. Writers, artists, and supporters volition stitchery to toast Carson, Bailey, Columeau, and Chaudhry and to rise important funds for The Paris Review to proceed to question retired and people bonzer writing. We anticipation you’ll articulation us.