Writing Fellow Susan Choi Leads Booker Prize Shortlist
Fine Arts Work Center Fellow and Writing Committee member Susan Choi (Writing Fellow 1997-1998) has been shortlisted for The 2025 Booker Prize for Flashlight. The novel, A thrilling, globe-spanning story that mines questions of memory, language, identity and family, explores Choi’s haunting relationship with the childhood memories from a trip to rural Japan in the 1970s.
Susan Choi is recognized alongside by Kiran Desai, Katie Kitamura, David Szalay, Benjamin Markovits and Andrew Miller as nominees for this prestegios award.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize has become one of literature’s most prestigious awards. Last year’s prize went to “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey, a novel set aboard the International Space Station. Other winners over the past decade have included “A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Marlon James, “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood, and Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bain.”
The judges will now reread the six finalists before announcing a winner at a ceremony in London on November 10, 2025. The winning author will receive 50,000 pounds, about $67,000.
The Full Shortlist:
Susan Choi, “Flashlight”
Kiran Desai, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”
Katie Kitamura, “Audition”
Benjamin Markovits, “The Rest of Our Lives,” set for a January 13 release in the United States
Andrew Miller, “The Land in Winter,” set for a November 4 release in the United States
David Szalay, “Flesh”
Susan Choi is the author of Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
