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

2016 marks the third 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.
 
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2016 Winners

FICTION:
THE SPORT OF KINGS by C.E. Morgan (FSG)

NONFICTION:
IN THE DARKROOM by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan Books)

YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
AS BRAVE AS YOU by Jason Reynolds (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Atheneum)

2016 Finalists

FICTION:

• IMAGINE ME GONE by Adam Haslett (Little, Brown)
• CAROUSEL COURT by Joe McGinniss Jr. (Simon & Schuster)
• THE SPORT OF KINGS by C.E. Morgan (FSG)
• BARKSKINS by Annie Proulx (Scribner)
• A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW by Amor Towles (Viking)
• THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

 
NONFICTION:

• AT THE EXISTENTIAL CAFE: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Satre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others, by Sarah Bakewell (Other Press)
• EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond (Crown)
• THE BLACK PRESIDENCY: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, by Michael Eric Dyson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• IN THE DARKROOM by Susan Faludi (Metropolitan Books)
• TRUEVINE: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South, by Beth Macy (Little, Brown)
• HILLBILLY ELEGY: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance (HarperCollins)

 
YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
 
Picture Books:

• THUNDER BOY JR. by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• FREEDOM OVER ME: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life, by Ashley Bryan (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Atheneum)

 Middle Grade:

• WE WILL NOT BE SILENT: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler, by Russell Freedman (Clarion)
• AS BRAVE AS YOU by Jason Reynolds (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Atheneum)

 Young Adult:

• THE READER by Traci Chee (Putnam)
• BURN BABY BURN by Meg Medina (Candlewick)