2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award Winner - The History of Sound - by Ben Shattuck
October 7, 2025, Hartford, CT — The Mark Twain House & Museum is pleased to award the 2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award (MTAVL) to Ben Shattuck for his collection of stories, The History of Sound, published by Viking. Shattuck is the author of a prior work, Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022.
The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award was established in 2016 by David Baldacci, New York Times bestselling author and museum trustee. Honoring distinguished fiction that speaks with an American voice and tells a uniquely American story, the Award seeks to preserve the searching and challenging spirit of Mark Twain’s way of looking at the world. It is given to a work of fiction published in the previous calendar year and carries a $25,000 cash prize provided by Michelle and David Baldacci.
Chosen from 148 books submitted by a wide range of publishers, The History of Sound presents a dozen interlocking stories, situated in various New England locales over three centuries and deploying a “hook-and-chain” motif, in which an element in one story connects with an element in a previous, paired story. In the title story, two young musicians newly in love spend the fall of 1919 recording folks songs on a trek through Maine; in the companion story, set 75 years later, a woman cleaning out a house discovers the wax cylinders on which those songs were recorded – and her own romantic quandaries link her unbeknownst to the protagonists of long ago, through the theme of a devastating regret.
Steeped in Americana, The History of Sound investigates the mysteriousness of found objects – old letters, a bird’s egg stored in an attic, unexpected artifacts hidden away in chimneys or beneath floorboards – that link characters and destinies across centuries. Its exquisite ironies are delivered in a seemingly simple prose that conveys the tantalizing elusiveness of the past and the enormity of Time.
The judges on the MTAVL panel praised The History of Sound for the precision, elegance and poignance of its writing. “This is some of the loveliest prose I have read in quite some time,” noted one judge. “And the most vivid and absorbing world-building. Nantucket is so well evoked, I almost shook the book for sand.”
“Shattuck’s fiction is an absolutely still pond into which he tosses small pebbles that create beautiful ripples,” another judge commented. “He’s a delicate miniaturist who keeps gigantic forces in the background; he addresses both the stuff of our daily lives, and the largest arcs of destiny, with equal sympathy and adroitness.” A third judge cited the stories’ melancholy and at times dryly humorous insights. “These linked short stories are made up of fleeting, quiet moments that reveal ourselves to ourselves. In forgotten corners of history, Shattuck has found mystery and beauty, and in The History of Sound his art is testimony celebrating our complex humanity.”
The 2025 MATVL Finalist Panel of Judges includes novelist Phil Klay, novelist and memoirist Esmeralda Santiago, 2024 MTAVL recipient Alice McDermott, Twain scholar Lawrence Howe, and critic and short story writer Rand Richards Cooper.
Previous winners of The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award include Absolution by Alice McDermott (2024); Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh (2023); The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton (2022); The Only Good Indian by Stephen Graham Jones (2021); On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2020); Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (2019); Dodgers by Bill Beverly (2018); and The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle (2017).
The 2025 MTAVL Award Celebration, featuring remarks by David Baldacci and a discussion of The History of Sound between Ben Shattuck and Chair of Judging Rand Richards Cooper, will take place on Friday, November 7th, at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, CT, and is open to the public. Tickets and information are available at https://www.marktwainaward.org. The celebration is sponsored by the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Ares Management, The Hartford, Webster Bank, and Connecticut Public, with in-kind support from Cenaxo, LLC and Michael Genovese.
Read the Press Release on the Mark Twain House & Museum Website
Book Tickets for the November 7 Award Celebration
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About The Mark Twain House & Museum
The Mark Twain House & Museum is the restored Hartford, Connecticut home where American author Samuel Clemens -- Mark Twain -- and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works during his years there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The museum offers tours of the restored Mark Twain House, along with a variety of programs that celebrate and promote Twain’s literary legacy.
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