On September 12, 2024—the birthday of the late writer Gabe Hudson—McSweeney’s is honored to announce the winner of the inaugural Gabe Hudson Prize. After Gabe’s sudden passing from complications due to undiagnosed diabetes in November 2023, his mother, Sanchia Semere, made a generous gift to McSweeney’s to establish a prize fund. On September 12, McSweeney will confer the Gabe Hudson Prize, which honors a fiction writer’s second book, published in the United States the year prior, and includes a $10,000 cash award.
The 2024 Gabe Hudson Prize winner is Ayana Mathis for her novel The Unsettled (Knopf, 2023). The Unsettled was also named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of 2023, a Best of 2023 by the New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, an Oprah Daily Best Novels of 2023, and a Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2023. The novel was a finalist for the 2024 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. The New York Times calls it “Poignant, heartbreaking."