S&S Reveals Fourth Books Like Us Winner

Avid Reader, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, has announced that Danielle Bradley’s debut, Crying in Baseball, has won S&S’s fourth annual Books Like Us First Novel Contest, which comes with a $50,000 book deal with the publisher. Bradley is represented by Nora Gonzalez at the Gernert Company.

According to Avid, Crying in Baseball is “framed by the seven games of the 1997 World Series” and centers on a construction worker whose girlfriend recently died. His daughter, a PhD student in Gainesville, visits him to “cheer on the Florida Marlins over mango and Coronas,” but the mood turns once her father reveals that he “plans to end his life if the Marlins win the Series.”

“Much of my writing is for and about my parents, about their labor,” Bradley shared in her contest submission letter. “My characters often sound like my dad, a Nuyorican bowling enthusiast who’s given most of his youth and health to maintaining the parks and landscapes of Miami. Or like my mom, one of 21 children, who is just as good with a wrench as she is with her gardening shears.”

S&S launched the Books Like Us Contest for underrepresented writers in 2020. The program rotates among the various S&S adult imprints every year.