Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, VA. In 2004 and 2005 he served with the U.S. Army in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq. He studied English at Virginia Commonwealth University after his honorable discharge and received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012.
The House is on Fire (2023) Rachel Beanland "The House is on Fire is a marvel. It has everything I want from historical fiction. It makes the past as urgent for its readers as it would have been for its characters. Beginning with one tragic mistake, the raising of a chandelier, Beanland expertly leads her readers through a spellbinding story of early America in all its complexity and contradiction."
Grimoire (2020) Robin Robertson "Few writers so expertly pull the curtains back on the many collective fictions, both ancient and new, that constitute our understanding of the world."
Night Train (2018) Thom Jones "The stories in this collection are sometimes profane, sometimes hilarious, and always brilliant. Thom Jones was an extraordinary writer."
Waiting for Eden (2018) Elliot Ackerman "With Waiting for Eden, Elliot Ackerman tells a story that cuts straight to the heart of the human condition. His sentences are elegant in their concision and directness, and they reveal as much about grief, love, and our duties to each other as any book I can recall reading. It’s a bold, ambitious project even in its most quiet moments, for it asks no less than where we draw the line around the inherent value of human life. This is a devastatingly sad and compassionate piece of work. Extraordinary."
Asymmetry (2018) Lisa Halliday "Amazing. Ms. Halliday has a unique ability to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. I'm struggling to think of a novel that has had a similar effect on me. Asymmetry is funny, sad, deeply humane, and clearly the product of bold intelligence at work."
Spoils (2017) Brian Van Reet "With Spoils Brian Van Reet has given readers an intensely moving novel. That it is also a nearly comprehensive examination of our modern wars is a remarkable demonstration of both the power and relevance of fiction."
Music of the Ghosts (2017) Vaddey Ratner "Vaddey Ratner’s new novel, Music of the Ghosts, is an extraordinary achievement. It is deeply haunting in its evocation of place, profound in the directness with which it confronts age old questions of guilt, regret, and loss, and staggeringly beautiful in its masterful lyricism. A book like this doesn’t come around very often. I hope everyone will read it."
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Award nominations
2012 National Book Award for Fiction (nominee) : The Yellow Birds