On May 12, nearly 300 people gathered at the Standard Hotel in New York City’s Meatpacking District to celebrate 25 years of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Program. At the event, B&N chairman Len Riggio spoke to the crowd about the importance of this program, which recognizes promising authors at the outset of their careers. To reinforce B&N’s commitment to Discover, Riggio announced that beginning next year, the total prize money for the program will be increased from $35,000 to $100,000.

“We are so proud that the Discover program is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and we are as passionate today about connecting readers with emerging new writers as we were when we started this program,” said Mary Amicucci, v-p, adult trade and children’s books at Barnes & Noble.

Founded in 1990 by Riggio, the Discover program has since singled out many lesser-known writers who went on to become household names, such as Gillian Flynn, Khaled Hosseini, and Cheryl Strayed. Some, including Junot Díaz, Anthony Doerr, Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Jhumpa Lahiri, have won the Pulitzer Prize, and Sherman Alexie, Katherine Boo, and Phil Klay have taken home National Book Awards.

“We live in a really busy world, and sometimes it’s easy to miss out,” said Miwa Messer, director of the Discover Great New Writers program. “The best way to describe a Discover title is, we know it when we see it. It’s a combination of language and storytelling. It’s that thing that makes you go, ‘I need to talk about this book... I cannot keep this to myself. You need to read this now, because the writing is that terrific, the voice is that extraordinary.’ ”

A group of roughly 20 B&N employees from across the country, including everyone from buyers to assistants, assesses submissions to the Discover program each year.

Out of 1,000 submissions, the group picks roughly 60 books in four seasonal lists. The judges then receive the titles, select the shortlists, and announce the fiction and nonfiction winners in March. In 2014, Evie Wyld took home the fiction award for her novel All the Birds, Singing (Pantheon); Bryce Andrews won for nonfiction for his memoir, [em]Badluck Way:

A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West [/em](Atria). The judges for the 25th-anniversary program—for which winners will be announced next spring—include Eleanor Brown, Ben Fountain, Thrity Umrigar, Scott Anderson, Candice Millard, and Strayed.

In a video played at the 25th anniversary event, Strayed, whose memoir, Wild, was selected before it was published in 2012, said that being picked was “like an early vote of approval at a time that I felt very nervous about what readers would think of the book.”

For Messer, in addition to pulling unknown writers to the literary forefront, the Discover program also has impact on readers in a tangible way. From her visits to stores, she has learned from customers that the Discover Great New Writers display is the first stop many make. “There’s a human piece that you can’t overlook,” Messer said. “It doesn’t matter where we are in the bookselling landscape, there’s still that human connection—I mean, isn’t that why we read? That’s the one gorgeously consistent thing we’ve always had... one person saying to another, ‘Hey you need to read this.’ That’s the key piece.”