Molly Antopol Wins Hadassah Fiction Award
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Author Molly Antopol has been named winner of Hadassah Magazine’s 2015 Harold U. Ribalow Prize for Jewish fiction.
Antopol, author of the short-story collection “The UnAmericans,” will be honored at a ceremony in New York on Dec. 1.
The prize has been awarded annually for the past 31 years to authors who create “an outstanding work of fiction on a Jewish theme,” according to a news release issued by Hadassah on Wednesday.
“The UnAmericans,” Antopol’s debut story collection, explores the “everyday anxieties and complex past lives” of immigrant characters in various locales, the news release says. A review in The New York Times said the book “has poise and gravity” and described the stories as “bleakly funny.”
Antopol’s book, published by W.W. Norton, was one of three nominated for this year’s Ribalow Prize. The other nominees were “The Mathematician’s Shiva” by Stuart Rojstaczer (Penguin/Random House) and “The Betrayers” by David Bezmozgis (Back Bay Books/Little Brown).
The independent panel of judges for the prize consisted of Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday; 2014 Ribalow Award winner Helene Wecker; and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.
“I am thrilled to be this year’s recipient of the Ribalow Prize,” said Antopol in a statement. “Many of the previous winners are among the writers whose books have been very meaningful to me over the years, and I greatly admire the work of the two other finalists.”
“The UnAmericans” also won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and the “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
