Awards: Center for Fiction First Novel Winner

Joseph Earl Thomas, author of God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (Grand Central Publishing) has won the $15,000 Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize.

The Center said that God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer "follows Joseph, an Iraq War veteran turned doctoral student and EMS worker in North Philly whose work leads him into encounters with friends and family from his past life and would-be future--including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Joseph and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, alternatingly bond over and struggle with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility. God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is a powerful examination of everyday black life--of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics."

Thomas is also the author of Sink, a memoir, and the short story collection Leviathan Beach. His writing has been published in the Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Dilettante Army, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.

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