Hanya Yanagihara

Writer Hanya Yanagihara won the Kirkus Prize for her second novel, 2015's A Little Life, a sweeping tale of male bonding and childhood trauma. A 1995 graduate of Smith College, Yanagihara settled in Manhattan and worked as a publicist and then a travel writer. Still an editor with T: The New York Times Style Magazine, she published her first novel in 2013. Although it didn't sell all that well, The People in the Trees earned critical praise for its audacity and depth of emotion. Yanagihara has said it took 18 years to write her first novel, and 18 months to write her second. A Little Life became a late summer hit in 2015, and was named as a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award.