Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars won the Aspen Words Literary Prize, given annually to “a work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.”
Orange’s novel, published in 2024 by Knopf, follows multiple generations of a Native American family traumatized by the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, in which scores of Arapaho and Cheyenne people were killed by the U.S. Army. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “a searing study of the consequences of a genocide.”
In a citation, prize jurors John Deasy, Louise Erdrich, Ben Fountain, Vanessa Hua, and Tayari Jones said, “Every tribal nation has its own story that deserves fierce emotional and intellectual telling. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, takes us from the Sand Creek Massacre to Oakland, California. On the way there, his characters become the bearers of America’s history of violence, the vessels of trauma and spirituality, and the wandering stars of addiction and redemption. Wandering Stars serves to deepen and inform Orange’s fine debut novel, There There, but it also stands on its own as a mesmerizing epic drama.”
Orange did not attend the prize ceremony but accepted the award in a prerecorded video, saying, “At a time like this, it can be hardest to believe in art and how it can impact the world. It also happens to be when we need it to most. Writing itself is an act of faith.…[It] took six years to write Wandering Stars. Belief in brief seems sometimes doable, but stretched over time, impossible.”
The Aspen Words Literary Prize was established in 2018. Previous winners include Mohsin Hamid for Exit West and Isabella Hammad for Enter Ghost.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
