Young Lions Bestow Leonine $10K Fiction Award
Vanita Salisbury
April 30, 2008
It’s always a little strange -- even jarring -- to attend a gala at the New York Public Library. First, literary types with money seem like an oxymoron. And second, you walk though the hallowed echoey halls filled with intimate lives bound in leather covers, only enter the party and have some lady with glasses (‘cause she reads a lot) and Louboutins step on your foot and spill her pinot noir on you. But a couple of nights ago at the NYPL, there was no wine-spilling and no drunken recitations of Proust (which, frankly, was a bit of a disappointment).
Instead, at the Young Lions Fiction Award ceremony, we had respectful attention (even though the booze was flowing) as part-time author Ethan Hawke emceed a night celebrating five authors under 35, all vying for the $10,000 prize. The night layered erudition with glamour. A very bronze Aaron Eckhart was in attendance, and onstage reading from the nominees’ works were Hawke (a cofounder of the award) Tony Award nominee Brían O’Byrne, Michael Shannon, and a stunning Amanda Peet (by far the standout reader, but don’t tell the others). In the audience was Peet’s husband, screenwriter David Benioff, also stunning.
The end of the evening brought us back to the reason for being there. Ron Currie, Jr., won for his novel God is Dead, and he hugged his mom for a really long time before accepting the check. It’s his first novel, and with glitterati bearing witness, it might just change his life.
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