James McBride wins $50,000 Kirkus Prize for fiction for “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store”

NEW YORK (AP) — Three books that explore and celebrate the diversity of American culture were awarded Kirkus Prizes on Wednesday night, with each winner receiving $50,000.

James McBride’s “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” a novel set in an eclectic Pennsylvania town in the 1930s, won in the fiction category. Héctor Tobar’s “Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of ‘Latino’” received the nonfiction award, and Ariel Aberg-Riger’s ”America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History” won for young reader’s literature.

The awards were presented by the trade publication Kirkus Reviews.

“History and community emerged as central themes in the most outstanding works of literature published this year. We see these ideas come to life in wildly different ways in all three of this year’s winners, each one compelling from beginning to end, begging to be celebrated, discussed, and shared,” Meg Kuehn, publisher of Kirkus Reviews, said in a statement.

Previous winners of the Kirkus Prize, established in 2014, include Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life,” Jason Reynolds’ “As Brave as You” and Susan Faludi’s “In the Darkroom.”