Gotham Book Prize Announces Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City for 2022 Best NYC-based Novel

A New York based jury of authors and academics selected Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott as the 2022 Gotham Book Prize award

NEW YORK, April 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Gotham Book Prize, an annual award created to encourage and honor writing about New York City in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, announced today that Andrea Elliott has been selected as the 2022 winner of the annual Gotham Book Prize for Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. A leading jury nominated a shortlist of ten books this winter and voted Elliott as the winner for being able to tell the story of tragedy and triumphs following main character Dasani as she navigates life in New York City.

"New York City remains a special place for us, and it's a privilege to continue honoring talented authors who write about the city with such passion," said Howard Wolfson and Bradley Tusk in a statement. "The jury was incredibly impressed  with how thoroughly and sensitively Elliott captured the challenges of homelessness and poverty in our city and wanted to recognize her deep reporting and powerful writing."

The Gotham Book Prize award was created during the height of Covid-19 as a way to honor New York City and support novelists and the community during a hard time. As New York City continues to recover from Covid-19, Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson will continue the Gotham Book Prize to help New York's writers and continue to tell stories that celebrate and highlight the city's unique vitality and diversity. The prize is awarded annually to the best book set in or about NYC each year and winners will receive $50,000.

INVISIBLE CHILD follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. She was named after the bottled water signaled Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani's childhood with the history of her family, tracing the passage of their ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, the homeless crisis in New York City has exploded amid a deepening chasm between rich and poor.

"Winning this prize is a profoundly special gift, both as a New Yorker and as a journalist with the city as her canvas. I can't think of another place that generates so many unforgettable stories, or such a gifted community of writers -- including the other finalists I am humbled to be among," said Andrea Elliott, author of Invisible Child. "In my 23 years as a journalist, no story has taken possession of me like Dasani's, or taught me more about the city I thought I knew. When this 11-year-old girl stared out her shelter window at the Empire State Building, she was seeing the height of her city's promise. I hope that readers of Invisible Child also come to see that Dasani's story is their story, too; and that to enter her world is to see New York – and even America – in all its dimensions."

A jury of New York leaders and authors came together to select the award's winner, including:

• Writer, entrepreneur and sociologist Anna Akbari
• Documentarian and filmmaker Ric Burns
• Novelist and memoirist Stephanie Danler
• Fordham professor and political scientist Dr. Christina Greer
• Writer, poet and Director of the Curator Culture series at The Bass Museum Tom Healy
• NYU Professor and Director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Mitchell Moss
• American University professor and novelist Patricia Park
• Novelist Melissa Rivero
• Poet Safiya Sinclair
• Queens Public Library CEO and former NYC Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott

"Now more than ever New Yorkers need to read to feel less alone. I am so thankful the Gotham Book Prize exists to highlight a writer like Andrea Elliott who writes with a clear eye for the policies and compassion needed in the city.  Elliott has written a book that contextualizes the complexities and inequities in New York City and has given us a clear narrative as we continue to have difficult conversations." - Dr. Christina Greer, Fordham professor and political scientist

"Cities are changing rapidly. What defines New York — then vs. now? Is there an enduring spirit? What does it mean to be a New Yorker? The Gotham Book Prize recognizes literary contributions that explore the answers to these and many more questions about the ever-evolving metropolis that is New York." - Anna Akbari, writer, entrepreneur and sociologist

"Andrea Elliott's riveting and deeply moving account of the life of a remarkable homeless girl and her family, struggling to find a way forward in a homeless shelter in the heart of Brooklyn, is the most important and powerful work written in the 21st century about life in American cities. Based on nearly a decade of indefatigable research and original reporting, the story that emerges of Dasani and her family is an indictment, a heartful cry of moral outrage, and a call for change." Ric Burns, Documentarian and filmmaker

"Meticulously researched, lyrically written, Andrea Elliott casts an unflinching eye to the issue of homelessness—utterly visible yet neglected in the larger discourse. INVISIBLE CHILD has forever changed the way I look at our city." -Patricia Park, American University professor and novelist

"This book is a phenomenal portrait of the lives of the unhoused and underprivileged in the New York City, a beautifully written and clear-eyed record of the unimaginable struggles of the people we pass by daily in the street, while not even realizing the depths of poverty that exist in the greatest city in the world, and the cruel and crushing wheel of a system that does little to change it. I was deeply moved by Andrea Elliot's incisive reporting and how tenderly and painterly she renders Dasani and her family. From the first moment we met Dasani, her luminous spirit stayed with me indelibly, page after page, as I rooted for her, cried, laughed, and raged. I can't think of a more relevant portrait of New York in particular, and America's crumbling governmental systems in general, than Invisible Child. What better way to understand a city, a nation, a people, than holding a mirror up to the lives that we are never asked to look out for? A truly magnificent book and a most deserving winner of this prize." - Safiya Sinclair, poet

"Communities across the nation are confronting homelessness and the need for new policies to assist families and children caught in a devastating web of poverty, addiction and mental illness. Andrea Elliott's penetrating analysis offers new insights in her book." - Mitchell Moss, Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, NYU

"We award the Gotham Book Prize to books that teach us about our city and ourselves.  "Invisible Child" is an eloquent, searing revelation about a New York most of us misunderstand or ignore: every night, thousands of families and children are homeless. Andrea Elliott writes about this crisis with rigor, insight, beauty and moral clarity. She shows us a New York we have an urgent obligation to change." - Tom Healy, Writer, poet and Director of the Curator Culture series at The Bass Museum

"With moving prose and detail, Andrea Elliot's Invisible Child is something of a call to arms. Here, we see Dasani Coates, a vibrant and precocious child, as she and her tightly-knit family navigate life and the city through homelessness, poverty, and addiction. But the systems and infrastructures meant to support and protect her and her family are the very ones we need to reexamine, if not entirely dismantle - not just in New York City, but across the country." - Melissa Rivero, novelist

Wolfson works for Bloomberg Philanthropies, serving as its Education program lead and also runs Mike Bloomberg's SuperPAC. Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, writer and philanthropist. The two became friends while working on Bloomberg's 2009 re-election campaign.

Nominations for the 2023 Gotham Book Prize will open in Fall of 2022. For more information, please visit gothambookprize.org.

SOURCE Gotham Book Prize