Patricia Lockwood wins $10,000 Gabe Hudson Prize for a dark, comic COVID-19 novel

Acclaimed author Patricia Lockwood is this year's winner of the Gabe Hudson Prize, a $10,000 honor named for the late author, educator and editor and given for fiction that demonstrates "humor, pathos, and a deep understanding of contemporary America.”

Lockwood was cited for "Will There Ever Be Another You,” a dark and comic novel about a woman's breakdown amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Sentences and passages flash us with beauty or leave us reeling with laughter," the judges' citation reads in part. "There is so much pain in the book and yet there is no self-pity, instead there is a marvelous self-awareness as to how ridiculous it is to be human.”

The Hudson prize was established in 2024 by his mother, Sanchia Semere, and is administered by the publisher McSweeney's. Hudson, who died in 2023 at age 52, was known and admired for such fiction as "Dear Mr. President,” for his work as an editor at large at McSweeney's and for his years as a teacher at Yonsei University in Korea, among other schools.

This book cover image released by Riverhead Books shows "Will There Ever Be Another You" by Patricia Lockwood. AP

Lockwood's other books include "Priestdaddy,” winner in 2018 of the James Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the novel "No One Is Talking About This,” shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. In a statement Thursday, Lockwood noted that she felt a kinship with Hudson, even though they never met.

"He was a truly generous literary citizen with a rich trajectory: a writer of funny, gut-punching stories, an inventive novelist, a cheerleader for others,” she said. "He was a Marine, like my brother, and a teacher in South Korea, in the same neighborhood where my husband grew up.”

Associated Press