1999

Plainsong

By Kent Haruf

Original Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Current Publisher: Vintage

Fiction Finalists That Year:

• Andre Dubus III for House of Sand and Fog
• Kent Haruf for Plainsong
• Patricia Henley for Hummingbird House
• Jean Thompson for Who Do You Love

Fiction Winner That Year: Ha Jin for Waiting

Fiction Judges That Year: Charles Johnson, Dorothy Allison, Allegra Goodman, Terry McMillan, Scott Spencer

The Year in Literature:

• The Hours by Michael Cunningham won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
• Günter Grass won the Nobel Prize for literature.

More Information: All of Haruf's novels take place in the fictional town of Holt in eastern Colorado. Holt is based on Yuma, Colorado, where Haruf lived in the early 1980s.