Celebrated Author Will Give Public Reading at Chautauqua Institution on Aug. 15 

Chautauqua Institution proudly announces Whale Fall: A Novel (Pantheon Books) by Elizabeth O’Connor as the 2025 winner of The Chautauqua Prize.  

Awarded annually since 2012, the Prize celebrates a book of fiction, literary/narrative nonfiction, or a book-length collection of poetry that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and honors the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts. As author of this year’s winning book, O’Connor receives $7,500 and will be presented with the Prize during a celebratory event and public reading at 3:30 p.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 15, in Chautauqua’s Hall of Philosophy.  

O’Connor said she was deeply grateful and thrilled to accept the Prize this summer at the Institution. “I am profoundly honoured (and still in shock!) to have Whale Fall recognised by The Chautauqua Prize,” O’Connor continued. “It is especially meaningful from an organisation so dedicated to the arts, to lifelong learning, and to community, all things close to my heart and my writing.”  

Whale Fall is a striking and sensual debut that defies simple genre classification. While it is a beautiful bildungsroman and work of historical fiction, it is also a study in anthropology, ethnography and folklore. It is a rich, metaphorical examination of the bones of what makes us human — history, culture, storytelling — against a backdrop of the literal bones of a decaying whale carcass washed ashore on the coast of Wales.  

In a seafaring community with a population that is slowly diminishing in the wake of industrialization and a world on the brink of World War II, it is the whale that sets the events of Whale Fall in motion. The changing tides bring not just a whale, but two ethnographers interested in recording the quiet way of life in — and preserving the traditions of — the small island town the main character, a young woman named Manod, calls home.  

“Whale Fall is a timeless and singular tale that is told as carefully and delicately as Manod’s embroidery, at the same time offering readers a vibrant and vivid narrative as substantial as the whale carcass beached on the island’s shore,” said Jordan Steves, Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education at Chautauqua Institution. 

Kwame Alexander, the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Chautauqua, called O’Connor’s novel “a poignant debut that shows us both the exploitation and power of a single story of (be)longing in the dissonance of the expanding shadow of the world.” 

The Prize jury and readers frequently remarked on the many ways in which O’Connor’s novel reflects a dynamic reading experience in various forms — from the page to the audiobook, this book offers “a reading experience that is wholly other.” Jurors called it “Hemingway-esque in how it beautifully illustrates the mundane, leaving everything that is big and looming in the world but a shadow,” and a work “written by someone who is capable of imaging a new use of language.” 

The 2025 guest judges for The Chautauqua Prize lauded the book. Best-selling author Andrew Krivák called the novel “an alluring, unearthly island of a book that is somehow about desire and distance at the same time. Reading it is like observing people on another planet through a microscope.” Similarly, well-renowned scholar Gena E. Chandler called Whale Fall “an emotionally piercing and engrossing read which will haunt you long after you exit its pages.” 

Since first appearing on bookshelves in May 2024, Whale Fall has been named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and NPR, an ALA Notable Fiction Book, and was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. 

O’Connor lives in Birmingham, England. Her short stories have appeared in The White Review and Granta, and she was the 2020 winner of the White Review Short Story Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Birmingham, specializing in the modernist writer H.D. and her writing of coastal landscapes.  

The Chautauqua Prize, awarded for the 14th time this year, has been inspired since its inception by the late literary and entertainment industry attorney Michael I. Rudell and his wife, Alice. Previous winners include The Sojourn, by Andrew Krivák (2012); Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, by Timothy Egan (2013); My Foreign Cities: A Memoir, by Elizabeth Scarboro (2014); Redeployment, by Phil Klay (2015); Off the Radar: A Father’s Secret, a Mother’s Heroism, and a Son’s Quest, by Cyrus Copeland (2016); The Fortunes: A Novel, by Peter Ho Davies (2017); The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir, by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich (2018); All the Names They Used for God: Stories, by Anjali Sachdeva (2019); Out of Darkness, Shining Light: A Novel, by Petina Gappah (2020); Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss (2021); All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler, by Rebecca Donner (2022); The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2023); and The Reformatory: A Novel, by Tananarive Due (2024). 

Winners of The Chautauqua Prize are noteworthy for their capacity to open inquiry and create an inviting space for conversation among many kinds of readers, making the books an ideal vehicle to engage in Chautauqua Institution’s historic tradition of reading and discussion in community. Chautauqua’s other annual literary award, the Chautauqua Janus Prize, celebrates experimental writers who have not yet published a book. Taken together, these prizes ensure that both tradition and innovation live at the heart of a Chautauqua reader’s life of learning. 

Details on The Chautauqua Prize are available online at prize.chq.org. Books published in 2025 will be accepted as submissions for the 2026 Prize beginning in September 2025. 

Praise for Whale Fall: A Novel 
 
“Both blunt and exquisite, … O’Connor’s excellent debut … is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude.” 
—Maggie Shipstead, New York Times Book Review 
 
“Spare and bracing. … O’Connor constructs her setting with precise, atmospheric detail that captures a world slowly being eroded. … It all makes for a haunting and lucid exploration of the moments leading up to immense change.” 
—NPR 
 
“Whale Fall is an astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O’Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod: I loved seeing the world through her eyes, and I didn’t want the novel to end.” 
—Maggie O’Farrell, New York Times best-selling author of The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet 
 
“Whale Fall is a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiseled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy.” 
—Colm Toibin, New York Times best-selling author of Long Island 
 
“O’Connor’s slim, powerful debut vibrates with elemental, immediate, and palpable scenes and descriptions. … O’Connor’s spare, incisive prose brings the island to vivid life.” 
—Boston Globe 
 
“In Whale Fall, the landscape and its people speak together. … By rejecting nostalgia but still foregrounding landscape, Whale Fall makes space for the more intimate, surreal ways that culture can relate to nature.” 
—The Nation 
 
“Evocative and haunting … written with a care and restraint that is rare in a debut novel. (Whale Fall) teems with visceral imagery.” 
—The Guardian 
 
“A haunting, unhurried, unusual debut. … O’Connor offers a clear-eyed exploration of our tendency to fetishize the rural, the isolated, and what it means to become an object of study.” 
—Joanna Quinn, New York Times best-selling author of The Whalebone Theater 
 
“The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change.” 
—Anne Enright, Booker Prize-winning author of The Gathering 
 
“Elizabeth O’Connor’s novel is an exquisite coming-of-age story, a beautifully crafted debut that plays with form — white space, fragments, transcripts, ethnographers’ notes — to create a nuanced account … of a place that is defined by its harsh conditions.” 
—Minneapolis Star Tribune 
 
“These minimalist pages shimmer. … What a testament to the capaciousness, generosity and emotional range of true art.” 
—Scientific American 
 
“Genuine and captivating, Whale Fall has a wonderful blend of complexity and heart that will give every reader something to think about for weeks after finishing it.” 
—Michigan Daily 
 
“From the opening sentences, the prose is direct, gorgeous, sometimes barren but rife with meaning.” 
—Brooklyn Rail 
 
“O’Connor’s precise and spare prose feels … full of possibility, while emulating the interior of her yearning protagonist. A notable debut imbued with the pain of buried promise.” 
—Booklist (starred review) 
 
“(A) luminous first novel. … Literary voyagers looking for new worlds should add this to their itinerary.” 
—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 
 
“O’Connor prompts us to consider what it is to experience ourselves — and our cultures — through strangers’ eyes. A beautiful meditation on the profound effects of seeing and being seen.” 
—Kirkus Reviews 
 
“Mesmerizing … Whale Fall is a rich and quietly compelling novel that vividly captures the community’s transformation. Entrancing descriptions illuminate the raw beauty of the island through seasonal changes. 
—Bookpage 
 
“Fresh and distinctive … Whale Fall is a beautifully nuanced, beguiling first novel, which leaves room for hope. O’Connor has a promising career ahead.” 
—Sunday Times (UK) 

 
ABOUT THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE    
Awarded annually since 2012, The Chautauqua Prize draws upon Chautauqua Institution’s considerable literary legacy to celebrate a book that provides a richly rewarding reading experience and to honor the author for a significant contribution to the literary arts. The author of the winning book will receive $7,500 and will participate in a Prize ceremony and reading on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution during the 2025 Summer Assembly. For more information, visit prize.chq.org.     

ABOUT CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY ARTS    
With a history steeped in the literary arts, Chautauqua Institution is the home of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, founded in 1878, which honors at least nine outstanding books of fiction, nonfiction, essays and poetry with community discussions and author presentations every summer. Further literary arts programs at Chautauqua include the annual Kwame Alexander Writers’ Lab & Conference, as well as the summer-long workshops, craft lectures and readings from some of the very best author-educators in North America at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center. Chautauqua Literary Arts is led by the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of the Literary Arts, an endowed chair established in memory of a beloved Chautauquan who, among other things, inspired Chautauqua’s first literary award, The Chautauqua Prize.   

ABOUT CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION    
Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York State that comes alive each summer — and year round through the CHQ Assembly online platforms — with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue.    

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