San Francisco author Molly Antopol won Hadassah magazine’s 2015 Harold U. Ribalow Prize for Jewish fiction. The author of “The UnAmericans,” her debut short-story collection, will be honored at a Dec. 1 ceremony in New York.
“The UnAmericans,” excerpted in the March 6, 2014 edition of J., explores the “everyday anxieties and complex past lives” of immigrant characters in various locales, the news release said.
The prize has been awarded annually for the past 31 years to authors who create outstanding works of fiction on a Jewish theme.
“I am thrilled to be this year’s recipient of the Ribalow Prize,” Antopol said 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 other nominees were “The Mathematician’s Shiva” by Stuart Rojstaczer of Palo Alto and “The Betrayers” by David Bezmozgis of Toronto.
“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.
The judges for the Ribalow Prize consisted of Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday, 2014 Ribalow Award winner Helene Wecker and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. — jta