The book is full of memorable scenes with sharp dialogue, tight descriptions, and the selection of a point of view that heightens the impact on the reader. Mark de Castrique (nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award – Secret Lives): Other than the Sherlock Holmes canon, which has been just plain fun to re-read many times since I was in sixth grade, I have re-read Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon multiple times. This informed a key relationship (between Molly and Giselle) in my novel The Maid. At one point, I found myself rereading Shakespeare’s Othello and thinking deeply about Desdemona’s handmaid in that book and the beguiling and intimate relationship she had with her charge. With The Maid, I reread widely, wildly and voraciously. Nita Prose (nominated for Best Novel – The Maid): When I’m setting out on a new manuscript, I re-read anything and everything that might inform scenes, moments, characters or a certain tone I’m after in my book. I love the characters, the voices and the authenticity of the experiences within the stories.Įli Cranor (nominated for Best First Novel – Don’t Know Tough): I try to go back and read True Grit each year. I find myself returning to these books often because they embody the kind of work I aspire to produce myself. Jackson, Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans. Juliana Goodman (nominated for Best Young Adult – The Black Girls Left Standing): Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Virginia Wolfe, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Kate Chopin are all authors that come to mind when I think about books I have kept over the years and still pick up when I’m looking for inspiration. Seraphina Nova Glass (nominated for Best Paperback Original – On a Quiet Street): It’s the books that I was forced to read in a college literature class that I would have never picked up on my own at that age that have become my favorites-books that speak to my soul and changed me in some way.

The Game by Laurie R. King