Crystal Hana Kim ’14 (CC’09) has been named a finalist for the 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award for her novel The Stone Home. Kim’s novel is one of five titles selected as finalists from a pool of over 150 submissions.
This marks the fourth year for the annual prize, established in 2020 and named in honor of famed writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. The award celebrates works committed to social justice, and alternates annually between poetry and fiction, this year featuring the latter.
The winner will be announced on Thursday, November 21 at an event at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), and will receive a $10,000 award along with an accompanying book tour at participant universities.
Kim’s novel follows a young girl and her mother in 1980s South Korea, struggling to find a living on the street. Their struggles only deepen when the police send them to a “reformatory center” run by the state, and they uncover the dark truth behind the center. Now it’s all they can do to try and survive, holding tight to each other and their newfound community of women.
The Washington Post cited the book as “haunting and elegiac,” and “fearless in its clear-eyed recounting.” Acclaimed novelist and Columbia Associate Professor of Writing Victor LaValle ’98 called the work “compelling, challenging” and “a powerful novel.”
The Stone Home is Kim’s second novel, following her acclaimed debut If You Leave Me in 2018, a tale of forbidden love during the Korean civil war that was named a Best Book of the Year by standard-bearers including The Washington Post, Literary Hub, and The Paris Review.
The Maya Angelou Book Award is presented by Kansas City Public Library, UMKC, the University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri State University, and Northwest Missouri State, Truman State, and Southeast Missouri State universities.
View the full list of finalists here.
