Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport has won the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize.
The winner of the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize is Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, a one-sentence, 1,034-page novel that you can absolutely finish, provided you’re not a baby.
The Goldsmiths Prize—which includes a £10,000 purse—is awarded each year to “a book that is deemed genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterizes the genre at its best.” (A novel novel, if you will. Except short stories are also eligible, so never mind.)
“Ducks, Newburyport is that rare thing: a book which, not long after its publication, one can unhesitatingly call a masterpiece,” said the Chair of the Judges, Erica Wagner.
Congratulations to Lucy Ellmann!
Jessie Gaynor
Jessie Gaynor is a senior editor at Lit Hub whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Glow was published by Random House in 2023. You can buy it here.
