Newfound Prose Prize
Open: 15 Sept 2022
Deadline: 15 Mar 2023
Guest Judge: Joy Castro
Award: First place is publication, $500 prize, 25 contributor copies, and royalties contract. Three finalists will be announced.
Reading Fee: $15
Enter: Closed—share your writing with us next year!
History
You know that long story of yours that wickedly exceeds the word counts for journals? Or that micro-essay collection you’ve been crafting that’s still too short to publish as a book? These works deserve to exist in print. Now they have a home.
The Newfound Prose Prize is awarded annually to a chapbook-length work of exceptional fiction or creative nonfiction. The work may be in the form of a long story or essay or a collection of short pieces (60 pages max). Other than the page limit, the only formal requirement is that some aspect of the work must inform or explore how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding.
Guidelines
- Send 15 to 60 double-spaced pages of prose (fiction or nonfiction).
- Simultaneous submissions and previously published work are acceptable.
- All entries must be sent online via our submission manager and be contained in a single document.
- A non-refundable $15 reading fee must accompany your work. If our reading fee is prohibitive, email editor [at] newfound [dot] org for a manuscript fee waiver. We can offer a few a year.
- Students (past and present), relatives, and close friends of the judge are ineligible.
Closed—share your writing with us next year!
Deadline
The submission deadline is March 15th, 2023, 12 a.m., Central daylight time.
Prize
- The winner will receive a prize of $500 plus 25 copies of the published manuscript. The author will have the opportunity to purchase additional copies at a discount.
- The author will receive a royalties contract (25% print/50% digital) to sell the chapbook with Newfound.
- Newfound will design, print, and bind the chapbook. The cover will be decided in cooperation with the winning author.
- All finalists will be announced in May of the following year on the Newfound blog and social media channels.
- Due to the number of submissions, we cannot leave each manuscript personalized feedback. Authors will receive acknowledgment of receipt and panel decision. Check here for notification of the winner.
Judge
Joy Castro is the award-winning author of Flight Risk, a finalist for a 2022 Thriller Award; the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home; the story collection How Winter Began; the memoir The Truth Book; and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award.
She is also the editor of the anthology Family Trouble and served as the guest judge of CRAFT’s first Creative Nonfiction Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Senses of Cinema, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Brevity, Seneca Review, Afro-Hispanic Review, and elsewhere. A former writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, she is now the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
For more information visit www.joycastro.com.
Closed—share your writing with us next year!
Panelists
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer, living in Japan, has work published or forthcoming in Smokelong Quarterly, Reckon Review, The Hennepin Review, Cheap Pop, Ruby Literary, The Razor, Syncopation Literary Journal, Cotton Xenomorph, Milk Candy Review, and Lost Balloon. Her work is in Best Small Fictions 2021, Best Microfiction 2022, and the Wigleaf Top 50 2022. Read Hard Skin, her short story collection, from Juventud Press. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at www.melissallanesbrownlee.com.
Elizabeth J. Colen is a PNW-based educator, writer, and editor interested in long-form poetry, the lyric essay, literary and visual collage, and research-based approaches to storytelling and memoir. She is the author of What Weaponry, a novel in prose poems, poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Lambda Literary Award and Audre Lorde Award finalist in 2011) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies, flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake, long poem / lyric essay hybrid The Green Condition, and fiction collaboration True Ash. With more than two decades of social justice activism, EJ remains committed to centering marginalized voices in all the work that she does. Nonfiction editor at Tupelo Press and freelance editor/manuscript consultant, she teaches in the English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Departments at Western Washington University.
Angie Kang is a Chinese-American illustrator and writer living in San Francisco, Calif. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Believer, Narrative, The Offing, The Rumpus, wildness, and others. Find more of her work at www.angiekang.net, or on instagram @anqiekanq.
Crystal Odelle (they/she) is a queer trans writer, chapbooks editor at Newfound, and author of the novel Goodnight. Their flash stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, bedfellows, Passages North, Strange Horizons, beestung, Hobart, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Tin House Scholar and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She writes RPGs at Feverdream Games and serves as academic & administrative coordinator for the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
André Le Mont Wilson is a Black queer poet and writer who works in Oakland, Calif., teaching storytelling and writing to adults with disabilities. His poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Quiet Lightning, Mom Egg Review, The Vincent Brothers Review, Litro Magazine, Rattle, Sun Magazine, RFD Magazine, Tokyo Poetry Journal, and The Society of Classical Poets Journal. His chapbook Hauntings won the 2022 Newfound Prose Prize.
Leah Myers is an Urban Native American writer with roots in Georgia, Arizona, and Washington who currently resides in Tuscaloosa, working for the University of Alabama. She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of New Orleans, where she was awarded the Mockbee Prize for Nonfiction two years in a row. Her work has previously appeared in Craft Literary Magazine, High Shelf Press, Newfound, and elsewhere. Leah is a member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and can be found on both Instagram and Twitter under @n8v_wordsmith.
Goldie Peacock writes stories, essays, and poems. Their pieces appear in HuffPost, (mac)ro(mic), Sundog Lit, Powders Press, Red Ogre Review, Fifth Wheel Press, Roi Fainéant Press, Moon Cola Zine, Wild Roof Journal, and more, with more to come. As a performer and art model, Goldie spent over a decade bouncing between frenetic movement and absolute stillness before chilling out and becoming a writer. This rich past experience, as well as being queer and nonbinary, often informs their writing. Celebrations of Goldie’s creative work include: a Brooklyn Nightlife Award, workshops taught at venues such as NYU, Georgia Tech, and The University of Southern Maine, and residencies with Chez Bushwick, Asylum Arts, and Earthdance. They live in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), as well as on Instagram and Twitter @goldiepeacock.
Originally from Houston, Amanda E. Scott is a Latinx writer currently pursuing a PhD in fiction at Western Michigan University, where she also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Third Coast. Prior to her doctoral studies, Amanda taught undergraduate courses in writing and editing at Texas State University and co-founded Porter House Review, where she remains Assistant Executive Editor. Her writing appears in Crab Orchard Review, Entropy, Gulf Coast, Hobart, Juked, New South, The Common, and elsewhere.
Winners & Finalists
2023
Judge: Joy Castro
Winner: Elissa Favero teaches visual arts histories at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and has worked as an educator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and at the Seattle Art Museum. She earned a B.A. in art history and environmental studies from Williams College and an M.A. in art and architectural history from the University of Washington. Elissa’s writing often centers art and landscape, and her art criticism, book reviews, and essays have appeared in Temporary Art Review, The Rumpus, Terrain.org, and River Teeth Journal’s Beautiful Things series. She is currently working toward her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction at the Rainier Writing Workshop.
Her winning chapbook Children of Rivers and Trees was published by Newfound in spring of 2024.
Finalists: Angeline Meitzler and Steffan Triplett.
2022
Judge: Erika T. Wurth
Winner: André Le Mont Wilson is a Black queer poet and writer who works in Oakland, California, teaching storytelling and writing to adults with disabilities. His poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Quiet Lightning, Mom Egg Review, The Vincent Brothers Review, Litro Magazine, Rattle, Sun Magazine, RFD Magazine, Tokyo Poetry Journal, and The Society of Classical Poets Journal.
His winning chapbook Hauntings was published by Newfound in spring of 2023.
Finalists: Maya Osman-Krinsky, Meng Ren, and Shilo Niziolek.
2021
Judge: Hanif Abdurraqib
Winner: Milo R. Muise is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of Idaho. The recipient of a 2018 Oregon Literary Fellowship in poetry, their work has appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Prelude, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. They serve as the Nonfiction Editor for Fugue Journal and tweet @milomew.
Their winning chapbook TL;DR was published by Newfound in spring of 2022.
Finalists: Raluca Comanelea, Lisa Fay Coutley, Kelly Ann Jacobson, and Virgie Townsend.
2020
Judge: Gabino Iglesias
Winner: Ananda Lima‘s work has appeared or is upcoming in The American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Passages North, The Acentos Review, The Common, and elsewhere. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in fiction from Rutgers University, Newark. She was a mentor at the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program. Her poetry chapbook, Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019), won the 2018 Vella Chapbook prize.
Her winning chapbook Tropicália as published by Newfound in spring of 2021.
Finalists: Jennifer Buentello, Kelly Martineau, and Steffan Triplett.
2019
Judge: xTx
Winner: Claire Oleson is a queer writer hailing from Grand Rapids, Mich. She has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Kenyon College where her work has won the Propper Prize for poetry and the Denham Sutcliffe Memorial Award. She’s an avid fan of books, bread, and trying to win the hearts of all felines, regardless of how cantankerous they may be. Her writing has been published in such places as the University of Kentucky’s graduate literary journal Limestone, Newfound, Bridge Eight Magazine, Sugar House Review, and the Kenyon Review online.
Her winning chapbook Things From The Creek Bed We Could Have Been was published by Newfound in spring of 2020.
Finalists: Boyer Rickel and Pete Stevens.
2018
Judge: Chloe Caldwell
Winner: Catherine Pikula is a secretary. She holds a BA from Bennington College and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poor Claudia, Prelude, and Cosmonauts Avenue among other journals.
Her winning chapbook, I’m Fine. How are You? was published by Newfound in fall of 2018.
Finalists: Jen Soriano, Ploi Pirapokin, and Jacqueline Kirkpatrick.
2017
Judge: Kathy Fish
Winner: Meghan McClure lives in Washington. Her work can be found in American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, LA Review, Water~Stone Review, Superstition Review, Bluestem, Pithead Chapel, Proximity Magazine, Boaat Press, Black Warrior Review, among others. Her collaborative book with Michael Schmeltzer, “A Single Throat Opens,” will be published by Black Lawrence Press in June 2017.
Her winning chapbook Portrait of a Body in Wreckages was published by Newfound in fall of 2017.
Finalists: Wendy Oleson and Dennis James Sweeney.
2016
Judge: Chelsea Martin
Winner: Mark Leidner is the author of two books of poetry, Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow Press, 2011) and The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator Press, 2011). He also co-wrote Jammed (2014), a feature-length comedy currently available to stream on Amazon.
His winning chapbook 21 Extremely Bad Breakups was published by Newfound in fall of 2016.
Finalists: Kristin Berger, Oscar D’Artois, Wendell Mayo, and Jamey Temple.
Closed—share your writing with us next year!