The Westport Prize for Literature is an annual prize established to honor an original work of literary fiction that is both relevant and timeless. The prize is overseen and administered by a steering committee of Westport resident volunteers, with an independent jury selecting the winner.
The prize is open to an author of an original work of long-form fiction published in the United States each calendar year (between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2026, for the 2026 prize). The submission window for the 2026 Westport Prize for Literature is January 5, 2026, to March 2, 2026, with the winner to be presented in November 2026.
The winner will receive a $10,000 prize and be invited to a special ceremony at the Library. The Edge of Water, the acclaimed debut novel from Olufunke Grace Bankole, was named the 2025 award winner; click here to watch the 2025 ceremony.
Only full-length novels written in English are eligible.
Novels in ALL genres are welcome.
Only books published for the first time in the United States between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2026, are eligible.
Only finished copies in electronic form will be accepted.
Novellas, collections of short stories, whether related or unrelated, and YA novels are NOT eligible.
Books previously published elsewhere are NOT eligible. This includes self-publishing the book previously.
Self-published books and eBook-only editions are NOT eligible.
In the event of a dispute as to eligibility, the Westport Prize for Literature Steering Committee will decide whether a book is eligible, and its decision will be binding.
All submissions must be submitted via our web portal by March 2, 2026.
For the 2026 prize, established and independent publishing houses are being invited to submit manuscripts for consideration. The cost is $100 per submission.
Submitted manuscripts will be vetted by volunteer readers who will score the book based on provided criteria. Click here if you are interested in volunteering to be a Westport Prize for Literature reader. (Please note: You must be a Westport resident to be a reader.)
The submissions, with the aggregated scores from the readers, will be submitted to a jury of experts to select that year’s winner. The jury is selected by the Westport Prize for Literature Steering Committee.
The 2025 Westport Prize for Literature was awarded to Olufunke Grace Bankole for The Edge of Water, her beautifully realized epic tale following the lives of three generations of women across two continents.
The 2024 Westport Prize for Literature was awarded to Alejandro Puyana for Freedom is a Feast, his acclaimed debut novel, a multigenerational saga of love and revolution set in the author’s native Venezuela.
The 2023 inaugural Westport Prize for Literature was awarded to Zadie Smith, who was recognized for The Fraud, described by publisher Penguin Random House as “a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story — and who gets to be believed.”
