Last night, the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction awarded the 2008 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize to Hannah Tinti for The Good Thief (Dial Press). Tinti, the editor of One Story magazine, made her fiction debut in 2004 with the short story collection Animal Crackers (Dial Press).
The prize, named in memory of former Doubleday president and CEO John
Sargent Sr., is given annually to honor a U.S. writer for a debut novel. Tinti was presented with the award, worth ten thousand dollars, during a banquet in New York City.
Also honored at the event was Farrar, Straus and Giroux president Jonathan Galassi, who received the Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction. The annual award was established by the Mercantile Library in 2005 to recognize agents, editors, and publishers who have worked to shore up fiction writers in the United States.
