The 2015 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize was judged by Mark Brazaitis and the winning title was Laurie Blauner’s, The Solace of Monsters. Brazaitis said of the novel, ” If Solace was like its protagonist–built from others’ body parts–it might draw its parts from Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and, naturally, Frankenstein. In the end, Solace is its own weird and wonderful creation, the story of the fifth version of a daughter who, despite being haunted by lives she never led . . . simply wants to be herself.”
Mark Brazaitis is the author of seven books of fiction, including The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Incurables: Stories, winner of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, and Julia & Rodrigo, winner of the 2012 Gival Press Novel Award. His book, Truth Poker: Stories, won the 2014 Autumn House Press Fiction Competition.
