During a virtual daylong celebration on April 16th, Christy Lefteri was announced as the winner of the third annual Aspen Words Literary Prize for her novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo. “We see wars on our screens and cross paths with the survivors in new lives in our neighborhoods, but we don’t see them,” Esmeralda Santiago, who served on the prize jury, said. “Lefteri brings us closer so we can, without fear.”

The Aspen Words Literary Prize is an annual award given by the nonprofit literary organization Aspen Words in partnership with NPR for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo traces the path of a pair of refugees whose lives have been shattered by the years-long war in Syria, and who have little hope to guide them but a cousin who awaits them in the U.K.