Richards Free Library and the Judges of the Sarah Josepha Hale award are pleased to announce that Chris Bohjalian is the 2023 Sarah Josepha Hale Award Medalist. He will accept the award on September 23, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Newport Opera House.
Bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian uses his hugely popular novels to explore compelling social and historical issues like human trafficking, domestic violence, and the Armenian genocide, as well as the more intimate challenges of marriage, parenting, and sexuality. In more than 20 books, most of which have been New York Times bestsellers, Bohjalian has cultivated a wide and devoted audience. His breakout novel, Midwives, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Instant New York Times bestseller The Flight Attendant was praised by USA Today as an “expertly turned thriller…an assured novel about reckoning not just with some ruthless bad guys, but private sadness as well.” An Emmy-nominated HBO Max television adaptation starring Kaley Cuoco debuted in 2020, with NPR calling it a “fizzy, dark, and funny mystery.” Bohjalian’s latest novel is the New York Times bestseller The Lioness, a blistering story of fame, race, love, and death set in a world on the cusp of great change. Writing in The New York Times, Connie Schultz praises how he “weaves life stories with such deftness, it’s impossible not to care how they end (or continue, as the case may be)”. Bohjalian’s books have been translated into 35 languages, and have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Hartford Courant, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage, and Salon.
For more information about Chris Bohjalian, please visit him on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, Twitter, or at chrisbohjalian.com.
For over fifty years, the Sarah Josepha Hale Award has been given by the Trustees of the Richards Free Library in recognition of a distinguished body of written work in the field of literature and letters. The award honors author, poet, and essayist Sarah Josepha Hale, who as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine shaped the opinion of nineteenth century American women. The list of Hale Award winners includes the finest writers of our times from Robert Frost in 1956 to Colin Calloway in 2022.
For more information about the Hale award please contact Justine Fafara, Director of the Richards Free Library, Newport, NH at 603-863-3430 or rfl@newport.lib.nh.us.
