This spring, n+1 announced the establishment of the Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize, a new $5,000 award named in memory of our contributor and beloved short story writer Anthony Veasna So. Today, we’re pleased to announce the inaugural prize winner, Trevor Shikaze, as well as the recipient of this year’s n+1 Writers’ Fellowship, Christina Nichol.
On Wednesday, May 26, we’ll be celebrating Trevor and Christina’s outstanding work—and commemorating Anthony—with a virtual reading and awards ceremony, hosted by New Yorker staff writer Elif Batuman. Join us at 7:30 EST via Zoom for the 2021 n+1 Writers Awards Ceremony—and find ticketing information here.
The Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize is a new $5,000 award established in memory of Anthony Veasna So, a beloved n+1 contributor who died in 2020, and is intended to offer support to fiction writers who, like Anthony, show a sustained commitment to producing literature that approaches the problems of contemporary life and politics with lucidity, intelligence, and humor. (For more about Anthony, read about his life and work in the New York Times.) Our inaugural prize winner, Trevor Shikaze, was raised in Burnaby, British Columbia. He does not have a degree, and for most of his life has worked in retail or low-level office jobs. Shikaze taught himself to write while working as a salesclerk at a family-run bookstore in Alberta. Since his first publication nearly a decade ago his fiction has appeared in n+1, The Baffler, The Walrus, and many other literary journals in the US, the UK, and Canada.
The n+1 Writers’ Fellowship is a $5,000 award given annually for the past six years to an n+1 contributor whose writing captures the spirit of n+1 and has been an important part of the magazine’s evolution. Our 2021 recipient, Christina Nichol, grew up in Northern California and lived overseas for ten years, teaching English in South Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, and the Republic of Georgia, where her 2012 Rona Jaffe Writers Award–winning satirical novel, Waiting for the Electricity, is set. Nichol received her MFA from the University of Florida and, in 2019, was a Fulbright Scholar in India, where she worked with farmers and indigenous women to tell stories about how climate change is impacting their livelihoods. She currently teaches environmental studies at Sonoma State University and is working on a book about progressive political movements in South Korea called Honey Badger Moonlight Knights Protect the President, as well as a novel.
The 2021 n+1 Writers Awards Ceremony is possible thanks to our generous sponsors: Ecco Press, Audible, Massie & McQuilkin, Lambda Literary, Grove Atlantic, The Gernert Company, Hachette Book Group, Amazon Studios, Farrar Straus & Giroux, W. W. Norton & Company, and Michael and Janet Pietsch. Learn more about our supporters, and past award winners, here.