2019 Thurber Prize
The Thurber Prize is one of America's premier awards for humorous literature. A single winner is selected by a panel of humor writers (often past prizewinners themselves), and receives a $5,000 prize purse.
2019 Winner:
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young
About the Book:
Simon Rich is "one of the funniest writers in America" (Daily Beast) -- a humorist who draws comparisons to Douglas Adams (New York Times Book Review), James Thurber, and P.G. Wodehouse (The Guardian). With Hits and Misses, he's back with a hilarious new collection of stories about dreaming big and falling flat, about ordinary people desperate for stardom and the stars who are bored by having it all.
Inspired by Rich's real experiences in Hollywood, Hits and Misses chronicles all the absurdity of fame and success alongside the heartbreaking humanity of failure. From a bitter tell-all by the horse Paul Revere rode to greatness to a gushing magazine profile of everyone's favorite World War II dictator, these stories roam across time and space to skewer our obsession with making it big -- from the days of ancient Babylon to the age of TMZ.
The 2019 Runners Up:
