"A Gift of Two" is a Runner-up Finalist

I'm honored to report that I almost shot the moon today: my novel "A Gift of Two" was chosen as the runner-up finalist to this year's AWP Prize for the Novel. To help me find a publisher, this year's judge -- author Zachary Lazar -- wrote me this lovely blurb:

“A GIFT OF TWO is a daring and perpetually interesting work of speculative fiction that literalizes and explores the repercussions of an impossibility—an individual splitting in two—and what this might say about living in America. The book vividly evokes a semi-real New York City and the surprising, always persuasive, choices of its memorable protagonist, Catarina.“

I've been working on this novel for almost seven years and am so moved to see its essence summed up so fittingly and succinctly by a fellow writer whose hands have typed out decades more words than me.

https://www.awpwriter.org/contests/awp_award_series_previous_winners/2017