• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Neustadt Prizes

Neustadt Prizes

The Neustadt and NSK Prizes for Literature

  • Home
  • The Prizes
    • The Neustadt Prize
      • All Neustadt Laureates
      • All Neustadt Finalists
      • All Neustadt Jurors
      • A Neustadt Laureate Booklist, 1970–2020
      • Neustadt-Nobel Prize Convergences
      • 2022 Jury
      • 2022 Finalists
    • The NSK Prize
      • All NSK Laureates
      • All NSK Finalists
      • All NSK Jurors
      • 2023 Jury
      • 2023 Finalists
  • The Neustadt Lit Festival
    • View Festival Videos
    • 2022 Featured Writers, Artists, and Scholars
    • Neustadt Lit Fest Poster Contest
  • Who We Are
    • The Neustadt Family
    • History & Mission
    • Contact
  • News & Media
    • Press Releases
    • Photos & Video
      • 2021 Festival Videos
      • The 2021 Neustadt Lit Fest Booklist
    • Historical Media Coverage
  • Education Network

Edwidge Danticat is 2018 Winner of Prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Haitian-American writer wins $50,000 “American Nobel”  

NORMAN, OKLA. (Friday, Nov. 10, 2017) – World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, announced late Thursday evening that Edwidge Danticat is the 25th laureate of the renowned Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Awarded in alternating years with the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, the Neustadt Prize recognizes outstanding literary merit in literature worldwide.

Danticat is the author of stories, essays, travel commentary, film scripts, YA novels, and four novels. In addition to a Pushcart Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the BOCAS Prize, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, Danticat won a MacArthur Fellowship and holds two honorary degrees.

Her debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (Soho, 1994; Vintage, 1998) was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 1998.

Danticat experiments with form and structure and frequently references the literary history of Haiti and the Caribbean. She paints scenes of immigrant life in New York and Miami with fresh details and palpable familiarity.

Achy Obejas nominated Danticat and was one of eight jurors on the 2018 Neustadt Prize panel. In her nominating statement, Obejas comments that Danticat’s work “addresses how the specter of history haunts the unresolved present” and undermines the future unless people find a way to redeem it.

Robert Con Davis-Undiano, World Literature Today’s executive director, notes that Danticat is a “master writer whose newest work promises even greater heights.”

Highly respected within the literary community for its recognition of excellence, the Neustadt Prize is often referenced as the “American Nobel” for its reputation as a lead-up to the Swedish Academy’s annual selection. Any living author writing from anywhere in the world is eligible for the Neustadt prize. The jury is comprised of acclaimed international authors, and that fact helps to keep external pressure from booksellers, publishers, and others who may have interest in influencing the outcome.

The Neustadt Prize announcement was made at a reception at the University of Oklahoma on Nov. 9, 2017.

The Neustadt Prize is the first international literary award of this scope to originate in the United States and is one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists and playwrights are equally eligible. Winners are awarded $50,000, a replica of an eagle feather cast in silver and a certificate. A generous endowment from the Neustadt family of Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and Watertown, Massachusetts; ensures the award in perpetuity.

Filed Under: News, Press Releases

Primary Sidebar

2022 Neustadt Lit Fest Agenda

2022 Schedule of Events

  • No Events

Get Email Updates


Follow Us


Neustadt Laureates

  • 2022 – Boubacar Boris Diop

  • 2020 – Ismail Kadare

  • 2018 – Edwidge Danticat

  • 2016 – Dubravka Ugrešić

  • 2014 – Mia Couto

  • 2012 – Rohinton Mistry

  • 2010 – Duo Duo

  • 2008 – Patricia Grace

  • 2006 – Claribel Alegría

  • 2004 – Adam Zagajewski

  • 2002 – Álvaro Mutis

  • 2000 – David Malouf

  • 1998 – Nuruddin Farah

  • 1996 – Assia Djebar

  • 1994 – Kamau Brathwaite

  • 1992 – João Cabral de Melo Neto

  • 1990 – Tomas Tranströmer

  • 1988 – Raja Rao

  • 1986 – Max Frisch

  • 1984 – Paavo Haavikko

  • 1982 – Octavio Paz

  • 1980 – Josef Škvorecký

  • 1978 – Czesław Miłosz

  • 1976 – Elizabeth Bishop

  • 1974 – Francis Ponge

  • 1972 – Gabriel García Márquez

  • 1970 – Giuseppe Ungaretti

NSK Laureates

  • 2023 – Gene Luen Yang

  • 2021 – Cynthia Leitich Smith

  • 2019 – Margarita Engle

  • 2017 – Marilyn Nelson

  • 2015 – Meshack Asare

  • 2013 – Naomi Shihab Nye

  • 2011 – Virginia Euwer Wolff

  • 2009 – Vera B. Williams

  • 2007 – Katherine Paterson

  • 2005 – Brian Doyle

  • 2003 – Mildred D. Taylor

Footer

World Literature Today

OU World Literature Today
630 Parrington Oval, Suite 110
Norman, OK 73019
405-325-4531

For additional information and/or accommodations on the basis of disability, call World Literature Today at (405) 325-4531.

  • History
  • The Neustadt Prize
  • The NSK Prize
  • The Neustadt Lit Festival
  • Contact
  • Press Inquiries
  • Sponsors
  • Festival Accommodations
  • Accessibility
  • Sustainability
  • HIPAA
  • OU Job Search
  • Policies
  • Legal Notices
  • Copyright
  • Resources & Offices

© 2023 · World Literature Today