T. Geronimo Johnson, author of two novels, Hold It ‘til It Hurts and Welcome to Braggsville, has been awarded with the inaugural literary prize from the Simpson Family Literacy Project. The prize honors a writer in midcareer and carries a prize of $50,000. The winner is chosen by an anonymous jury.

Johnson’s first novel was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award and his second was longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award.

On winning the award, Johnson wrote, “To be named the inaugural recipient of the Simpson Family Literary Prize is an honor I treasure as both a novelist and an educator. … The award will support continued work on a novel that explores the convergence of Afro-futurism; global AI; the economic imperatives that amplify cultural differences; corporate religion (in all manifestations); and tech inequity. The question behind this novel is the same question that animates my previous work: How do we learn to care about people who are not like us? I’m thrilled by the opportunity to complete this journey without interruption.”

Joyce Carol Oates said this about Johnson: “T. Geronimo Johnson is a brilliantly inventive, audacious, ever-surprising yet warmly sympathetic chronicler of our turbulent America of the early 21st century. His astonishing novel Welcome to Braggsville is many things—a satirical vision of ultra-liberal ideals/illusions, a coming-of-age story tracking the misadventures of four Berkeley undergraduates on a quixotic mission to the Deep South, a lyrically rendered love story with a satisfactorily irresolute ending, a cri de coeur of racial anguish. Readers will find it touching and hilarious by turns, tragic and revelatory, wise beyond the years of its young and dazzlingly talented author.”

Photo credit: T. Geronimo Johnson website