The Newest Young Lions Fiction Award Winner

Ladies, gentlemen, and Young Lions, your 2014 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award winner is Paul Yoon for Snow Hunters. On Monday night in a ceremony at the New York Public Library in front of a cocktail attire-adored adorned audience, Yoon humbly accepted the prestigious honor for his slim but powerful novel, released in August 2013. He thanked a handful of people for their help, including the staff at his imprint Simon & Schuster, and his wife, short story-writer (and soon-to-be-novelist) Laura van den Berg.

Yoon, who's also a winner of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Award Foundation, beat out a very impressive list of nominees: Chinelo Okparanta, Anthony Marra, Jennifer DuBois, and Matt Bell. All the nominees' novels were honored with readings before the winner was announced at the end of the night. (Gretchen Mol reading Jennifer DuBois FTW, in case you're keeping score.)

Snow Hunters follows a Korean war veteran, Yohan, who lands in Brazil looking to start over. Read Bustle's review of Snow Hunters here.

Along with the glory of being in the company of writers like Karen Russell, Colson Whitehead, and Claire Vaye Watkins — which is nice and all — Yoon takes home $10,000. That'll make the drive back home feel a little less long.

Image: Peter Yoon