New Yorker Ranks Top Young Novelists

The next few days will be nail-biters for the brightest young writers, as The New Yorker will be notifying those who have made the cut for their new list of the 20 best writers under the age of 40. The last list, in 1999, included writers who had yet to create a stir, such as Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, and future fiction Pulitzer Prize winners Michael Chabon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Junot Diaz. While some writers have criticized the list as too high-stakes, literary agents said it could open doors to young novelists, garnering larger advances, and exposure. The list will be made public in the magazine's fiction issue on June 7. Meanwhile, The New York Observer provided a list of "writers you won't see on the '20 Under 40' list."