The Westport Prize for Literature is an annual prize established to honor an original work of fiction that explores issues in contemporary society. The prize is overseen and administered by a steering committee of Westport resident volunteers, with an independent jury selecting the winner.
The submission window for the 2024 Westport Prize for Literature is now through March 31, 2024, with the prize open to an author of an original work of long-form fiction published in the United States between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024.
The winner will be announced in October 2024 at an event scheduled in coordination with The Westport Library’s annual StoryFest, which the winning author must attend in person. The recipient will receive a $10,000 prize.
Eligibility
- 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, 2024, and December 31, 2024, 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 31, 2024.
Process
- For the 2024 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.
Steering Committee Members
Candice Savin, chair
Alison Hoffman
Patra Kanchanagom
Maggie Mudd
Sybil Steinberg
Past Recipients
Zadie Smith, The Fraud
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.”
