NEW YORK (TIP): Indian American author Sarah Thankam Mathews has made it to the finals of the 2022 National Book Awards with her debut novel ‘All This Could Be Different.’

The Winners will be announced on Nov 16 at the 73rd National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City and broadcast live for readers everywhere. Mathews’ debut novel tells the story of a young queer immigrant who creates a community for herself while grappling with the oppressive demands of capitalism.

Publisher Viking Books describes it as “A beautiful and capacious novel rendered in singular, unforgettable prose.”

“It’s a wise, tender, and riveting group portrait of young people forging love and community amidst struggle, and a moving story of one immigrant’s journey to make her home in the world.”

“I simply will never be over this,” Mathews tweeted after the National Book Foundation announced the name of five finalists in fiction category with the New York Times.

“Congratulations to the #NBAwards Fiction Finalists: Tess Gunty, Gayl Jones, @JamilJanKochai, Sarah Thankam Mathews (@smathewss), and Alejandro Varela (@drovarela)! And the Fiction publishers: @AAKnopf, @penguinrandom, @beaconpressbks, @VikingBooks, @astrahousebooks,” it tweeted,

Mathews grew up between Oman and India and moved to the US at the age of 17. Her work has been published in places including AGNI, SSENSE, and Best American Short Stories.

She was a 2020 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the recipient of a Rona Jaffe fellowship at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“Sarah Thankam Mathews has written one of the buzziest, and most human, books of the year,” the Vogue said.

“…an extraordinary novel, spiny and delicate, scathingly funny and wildly moving. Sarah Thankam Mathews is a brilliant writer, one whose every ringing sentence holds both bite and heart,” Lauren Groff, author of Matrix, said.

The National Book Foundation will broadcast the National Book Awards Ceremony on YouTube, Facebook, and the Foundation’s website at nationalbook.org/awards.

Winners of the National Book Awards receive $10,000 and a bronze medal and statue; Finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal; Winners and Finalists in the Translated Literature category will split the prize evenly between author and translator.

Between the five categories – Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature — there are six writers and one translator who have been previously honored by the National Book Awards.

They are: Gayl Jones, a 1998 Fiction Finalist; Scholastique Mukasonga, a 2019 Translated Literature Finalist; Sharon Olds, a 2002 Poetry Finalist; David Quammen, a 2018 Nonfiction Longlister; Yoko Tawada and Margaret Mitsutani, the 2018 Translated Literature Winners; and Jenny Xie, a 2018 Poetry Finalist. All five of the Finalists for Young People’s Literature are first-time National Book Award honorees. Six of the twenty-five Finalist titles are debuts.

Publishers submitted a total of 1,772 books for this year’s National Book Awards: 463 in Fiction, 607 in Nonfiction, 260 in Poetry, 146 in Translated Literature, and 296 in Young People’s Literature.

Two lifetime achievement awards will also be presented as part of the evening’s ceremony: Art Spiegelman will be recognized with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, presented by Neil Gaiman, and Tracie D. Hall will receive the Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.