2026 Westport Prize for Literature Award Ceremony and Author Conversation: ‘Good People’ by Patmeena Sabit
Event Details
The Westport Prize for Literature celebrates its fourth year by honoring Good People, the haunting debut novel by Patmeena Sabit, as the winner of this year's prize. Sabit will be awarded the prize in a ceremony held in the Trefz Forum and take part in a special conversation with The Yale Review editor Meghan O’Rourke.
There will be copies of Good People available for purchase at the event, with Sabit signing afterward.
The 2026 Westport Prize for Literature is awarded annually to an original work of literary fiction that is both relevant and timeless.
Why You Should Come
The Westport Prize for Literature is a celebration of literature and one of the literary highlights of the Westport calendar. Submissions for the 2025 prize were read and vetted by a team of Westport-based volunteer readers — numbering nearly 50 for this year — with the best-reviewed manuscripts advancing to the jury that selected this year’s winner. The jurors for 2026 were playwright and author Tommy Greenwald, book blogger and aggregator Suzanne Leopold, publishing industry veteran Erica Melnichok, The Lifeboat author Charlotte Rogan, and freelance editor Stephanie Klose.
This is also an opportunity to hear from Sabit one of the rising stars in literature, as she discusses her debut book with O'Rourke, the decorated editor of the legendary Yale Review.
Good People is a national bestseller, one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2026, and longlisted for the Giller Prize. Ann Patchet called Good People, "A thrilling tour de force of a novel. I’ll be recommending this book to everyone."
About the Book
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. It’s a riveting, provocative story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.
From Crown Publishing
About the Author
Patmeena Sabit was born in Kabul a few years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When she was a month old, her family fled the conflict and became refugees in Pakistan, joining the millions of other Afghans that had sought refuge there. They later moved to the United States and she grew up in Virginia. She currently lives in Toronto.
About the Moderator
Meghan O'Rourke is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness and The Long Goodbye, as well as the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and more. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, and a Whiting Nonfiction Award, she resides in New Haven, where she teaches at Yale University and is the editor of The Yale Review.
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