We are now open for our 2025 competition. Find out more here.
2024 Book Winner:
Khanh Ha, An Artist's Legacy
An Artist's Legacy is a sublime work of historical fiction anchored in the complex cultural conflicts of the First Indochina War and its climactic confrontation at Dien Bien Phu. Through rich character development, detailed cultural perspective, and expert military exposition, Khanh Ha offers a fresh and detailed perspective on a conflict, and the players who shaped and were shaped by it, that irreparably turned the course and path of 20th Century geopolitics.
-J. Eric Smith, author of Ubulembu
preorder here.
Shortlist
Congratulations to the following writers!
Khanh Ha, An Artist's Legacy
Christy Bailey, Pañuelo Girl
Andrew Gretes, Please Don't Feed the Philosophers
Dennis Pahl, The Museum of Lost Things: Stories
Longlist
Stephanie Dupal, The Kindness of Terrible People
Colby Coash, Unexpected Legacy
Carol Matos, Another Kind of Migration
Lena Zycinsky, On the Threshold of Empire
Andrew Gretes, Please Don't Feed the Philosophers
Khanh Ha, An Artist's Legacy
Vytautas Malesh, Constellations at Sea
Kee Kee Buckley, Seeking Shama
Nnandi Samuel, A Country of Bone & Rot
Josh Rolnick, Pump Head: A Novella and Stories
Ayshe Dengtash, Away
Cristian Leata, Leaving for Better
Paul Clayton, The Fake Memoir of a Mid-List Writer
Dennis Pahl, The Museum of Lost Things: Stories
Christy Bailey, Pañuelo Girl
J. Roarke, The Tellings of Julio Rivera and Other Short Stories
Vera Wadu, The Language of Our Souls
About the Book Prize
$1,000 advance and standard contract from Unleash Press for one winning manuscript. Novels, poetry collections, short story collections, and creative nonfiction manuscripts are accepted. We are now open for our 2025 competition. Submit here. FINAL JUDGE (2025): TBA
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2023 winner
2022 winner
National Book Award Nominee
The UNLEASH
WIPprize
Unleash Work-in-Progress (WIP) Award 2025 will open in January
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2023 Book Prize Winner
Ubulembu and Other Stories
by
J. Eric Smith
J. Eric Smith’s Ubulembu is a remarkable mix of settings, characters, and time periods that flow effortlessly between ages past and the fraught future. Regardless of the epoch in which readers find themselves, Smith swiftly makes us at home; we become participants in his stories, not mere observers. The collection of sixteen stories is unified by an irreverent freshness delivered in consistently delicious language. Each story was my favorite until I read the next one. Smith has given readers an adventure in the truest sense: there is surprise and reward at every turn. Ubulembu is a distinctive addition to American literature.
-Richard C. McPherson, Final Judge and Author of Man Wanted in Cheyenne
Congrats to our 2023 finalists
Shortlist
Joan Wilking, After the Fire
Ruyan Meng, The Morgue Keeper
Antonio Elefano, Lolita Rising
Emily Hyland, Divorced Business Partners
J. Eric Smith, Ubulembu and Other Stories
Longlist
Paul Hackley, Old Rag
Michelle Ephraim, GREEN WORLD: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare
Antonio Elefano, Lolita Rising
Hannah Kennedy, The Little Book of Modern Farce
Khanh Ha, An Artist's Legacy
J. Eric Smith, Ubulembu and Other Stories
Ruyan Meng, The Morgue Keeper
Joan Wilking, After the Fire
Lena Zycinsky, Bela
Suzanne Heagy, The Five Time Wife
S. K. Stringer, The Big Belt of Happiness
JoeAnn Hart, Arroyo Circle
R. Simon, Bird, Bone, Blood
Josh Rivera Jiménez, Dinner Party from Hell
Morgan Christie, Oceans Full of Water
Robyn Carter, Impossible Object
Alex Stanley, The Other Night
Ryan Ridge, The Weird Years
Emily Hyland, Divorced Business Partners
2022 Book Prize Winner
Congrats to our 2022 finalists
Shortlist
Julie Benesh, Flyover Girls: Stories
Mickey Revenaugh, The Airport Series
Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross, Inadequate Methods of Self-Preservation
Longlist
Julie Benesh, Flyover Girls: Stories
Joshua Bernstein, Lives of the Mind
Efrosini Camatsos, The Duct-Tape Diary
Will Clattenburg, Flood the Garden
John Loonam, Music the World Makes
Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross, Inadequate Methods of Self-Preservation
Ruyan Meng, Scent of the City
Rafael Moscatel, The Bastard of Beverly Hills
Midge Raymond, Rogue Valley: Stories
Brandy Reinke, Great Deaths of the Con
Mickey Revenaugh, The Airport Series
Joe Taylor, Don't Be Lonely, Lone Ranger
Magpie
by Bronwen Carson