Shearin wins YA Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize for two of her entries

Faith Shearin has won the Young Adult Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize for both of her entries Lost River, 1918 and Horse Latitudes.

The annual prize is run jointly by UK indie Can of Worms and New York-based Leapfrog Press. The winner receives a publishing contract and an advance. Lost River, 1918 will be published first in August 2022 with Horse Latitudes to follow in spring 2023. 

Judging the finalists, author Anthony McGowan said Lost River, 1918 was "an extraordinary work of art". He added: "It is a story of death and rebirth, borrowing from myth and fairy tale, but also conjuring up literary texts from Frankenstein and Dracula, from southern gothic to magical realism. Yet it remains entirely itself, not quite like anything else I’ve read. The prose is rich and delicate, the characters memorable, the story immersive. It has the feel of an instant classic.” 

Publisher, Tobias Steed, said: “In a year when we see the word unprecedented being overused, here we are in unprecedented times, we’ve had joint winners before but not from the same author. With anonymized judging anything is possible, and Anthony was pretty well evenly split on his appraisal of Faith’s entries. We could have had a casting vote for one or other of the titles, but truth be told, we want to publish both, and feel both deserve the accolade of winning the inaugural YA middle-grade category of the Leapfrog Global Fiction prize."

Shearin is an award-winning poet and the author of six previous books of poetry. She has received awards from Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. This is her first published fiction.