Friends,

Tommy Pico’s IRL won the 3rd annual Brooklyn Library Prize for Fiction & Poetry!

“IRL delights and surprises, defies categorization, and challenges our narrative and linguistic expectations,” said Téa Obreht, Brooklyn Library Prize jury member and National Book Award finalist. “It is, on every level, a remarkable achievement.”

About winning the prize, Tommy said, “When I was young and bullied, libraries gave me books and books gave me a reason to want to keep going. Seeing [IRL] awarded a literature prize by a library is pretty cosmic.”

Pico was awarded the Fiction & Poetry prize by a jury that featured Téa Obreht (novelist, National Book Award finalist), Anderson Tepper (Vanity Fair editor and Brooklyn Book Festival international committee co-chair), Imbolo Mbue (novelist, winner of the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Jack Halberstam (eminent queer theorist and Columbia University professor), and Nick Higgins (BPL Director of Outreach Services).

Please join us in congratulating Tommy...yay Teebs!!!

If you haven’t already, get your copy of IRL now.

Love,

The Editors