At a special ceremony in the penthouse of the Four Seasons Residences in Austin, Kirkus Reviews, the nation’s leading journal of prepublication book reviews, announced the winners of the second annual Kirkus Prize in the categories of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature.

2015 marks the second year of the Kirkus Prize, one of the richest annual literary awards in the world, with a prize of $150,000 bestowed: $50,000 per category to the authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the discerning, thoughtful criticism that Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large since it was founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus.
 
For more information about Kirkus Reviews and the Kirkus Prize, please click here.

2015 Winners

FICTION:
A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday)

NONFICTION:
BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME: Notes on the First 150 Years in America, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau)

YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
ECHO by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Scholastic)

2015 Finalists

FICTION:

• THE INCARNATIONS by Susan Barker (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)
• A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN by Lucia Berlin (FSG)
• ‪‬FATES AND FURIES by Lauren Groff (Riverhead)
• THE STORY OF MY TEETH by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press)
• THE BOOK OF ARON by Jim Shepard (Knopf)
• A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara (Doubleday)

 
NONFICTION:

• BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME: Notes on the First 150 Years in America, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau)
• WHIRLWIND: The American Revolution and the War that Won It, by John Ferling (Bloomsbury)
• H IS FOR HAWK by Helen Macdonald (Grove)
• THE DELUGE: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931, by Adam Tooze (Viking)
• PACIFIC: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers, by Simon Winchester (Harper)
• THE INVENTION OF NATURE: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, by Andrea Wulf (Knopf)

 
YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
 
Picture Books:

• THE NEW SMALL PERSON by Lauren Child (Candlewick)
• LILLIAN'S RIGHT TO VOTE: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by Jonah Winter; illustrated by Shane W. Evans (Schwartz & Wade/Random House)

 Middle Grade:

• ECHO by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Scholastic)
• FUNNY BONES: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras, by Duncan Tonatiuh (Abrams)

 Young Adult:

• THE GAME OF LOVE AND DEATH by Martha Brockenbrough (Levine/Scholastic)
• SHADOWSHAPER by Daniel José Older (Levine/Scholastic)