Sonora Jha’s novel wins 2024 Washington State Book Award for Fiction

Indian American writer Sonora Jha’s latest novel, The Laughter,  described by the New York Times “a no-holds-barred comic achievement,” has won the 2024 Prize for Fiction from the Washington State Book Awards.

The best-selling book tells the story of two very different university professors navigating academia and the wider American zeitgeist during the 2016 presidential election.

The Washington Center for the Book—an affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book administered by the Washington State Library—announced The Laughter as the winner in the Fiction category on last week. A panel of five judges, including librarians, authors and independent booksellers, selected the winner out of six finalists.

Previously known as the Governor’s Writers Awards, the program honors exceptional works by authors from Washington. For 2024, 39 finalists were selected across seven categories for books published in 2023.

READ: Sonora Jha among 2024 Washington State Book Award finalists (September 17, 2024)

“As someone who has made Washington my home and felt a tremendous sense of community here, I feel so grateful to have my work recognized and celebrated from among authors I deeply admire,” says Jha, who serves as Associate Dean of Faculty Scholarship & Academic Community at the College of Arts and Sciences, at Seattle University.

“The Laughter satirizes, critiques and also turns a loving eye on our region and on America, so this award feels especially meaningful to me.”

“Honored to receive the Washington State Book Award for Fiction! So grateful to @WAStateLib for celebrating Washington state authors. My deepest thanks to the judges and to the other finalists, whose work I so admire! Bonus pic of a plum ripening in the sun as I wrote at a window,” she posted on X.

READ: Jhumpa Lahiri declines Noguchi Museum Award over ban on Kaffiyehs (September 26, 2024)

Jha was formerly a journalist in India and Singapore and among her appointments were that of Chief of Bureau and Special Correspondent for The Times of India, the subcontinent’s largest English-language daily.

She has a PhD in Political Communication and her academic research on the press, politics and the Internet has been published in leading academic journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism and the Electronic Journal of Communication, among others.

READ: Cross-continental love: Rediscovering love in the valley of Kashmir with Monica Saigal’s latest novel (March 17, 2024)

Sonora Jha teaches courses in journalism and mass communication at Seattle University, advises the campus newspaper, The Spectator, and directs a study abroad, leading students to study journalism and mass media in India.

Her first novel, “Foreign,” based on her journalistic and academic work into the farmers’ suicide crisis in India, was published by Penguin Random House India in 2013. Her co-edited book, “New Feminisms in South Asian Social Media, Film, and Literature” was published by Routledge USA in 2017.