Ivey a Pulitzer Prize finalist

MAT-SU — Valley resident and Frontiersman alum Eowyn Ivey came oh-so close to winning one of fiction’s top honors Monday.

The Pulitzer Prizes announced winners and runners up Monday. Ivey’s debut novel, “The Snow Child,” was a finalist in the fiction category.

The Pulitzer committee describes Ivey’s work as “(an) enchanting novel about an older homesteading couple who long for a child amid the harsh wilderness of Alaska and a feral girl who emerges from the woods to bring them hope.”

The winner was “The Orphan Master’s Son” by Adam Johnson, a novel set in North Korea. The committee also named a second finalist — Nathan Englander’s collection of short stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.”

Ivey has been named International Author of the Year in the U.K.’s National Book Awards and won an award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, among numerous other plaudits.

“Thank you everyone for the congrats — what an amazing morning. I was waiting with excitement to see the Pulitzer list because I like to READ the winners and finalists. Never, ever dreamed ‘The Snow Child’ would be in the mix. An incredible honor,” she wrote on her Facebook page the day of the announcement.