Amanda Jenkins has a rare combination of style and humanity. While her words can leap off the page at us with bold innovation, the spaces between engage us with emotional nuance. She has shown this in such previous novels as Damage, a portrait written in the second person of the complicated relationship of two seemingly perfect high school students--a jock and a cheerleader--struggling to make sense of death and their own repressed feelings.

In Night Roads, the work in progress for which she is receiving the Naylor Award, Jenkins takes a juicy risk. She mocks the vampire genre while taking its characters seriously as both symbols and real people. A surly, reluctant teenage recruit to bloodsucking must learn new skills to survive. Two experienced vampires take him on a road trip to teach him how to pick up “feeds” and to become a man. We look forward to Jenkins completing this journey and many more to come.