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Nonfiction Prize

For the 2026 prize, the Autumn House staff, as well as select outsider readers, serve as the preliminary readers, and the final judge is Ira Sukrungruang. The winner receives publication of their full-length manuscript and $2,500. The submission period opens March 1, 2026, and closes April 30, 2026 (Eastern Time). We will announce the finalists and the winner of the prize in August 2026. 

Guidelines for the Autumn House Nonfiction Prize

  • The winner will receive book publication, a $1,000 honorarium, and a $1,500 travel/publicity grant to promote their book
  • All finalists will be considered for publication
  • Nonfiction submissions should be approximately 150-300 double-spaced pages (37,500-75,000 words)
  • The reading fee is $35. (We will waive the submission fee for those undergoing financial hardship or living with limited means. Before you reach out to request a waived fee, please read our full statement and instructions here. If the guidelines are not followed, we will not be able to offer a waived fee.)
  • Autumn House is looking for personal essay collections and memoirs; we do not accept self-help books
  • The book must be previously unpublished as a whole. However, individual pieces may have been published in journals, magazines, or anthologies.
  • Use of AI to create and revise the structure, language, or creative development of the work is prohibited. This includes brainstorming, idea generation or refinement, outlining, drafting, rewriting, or developmental editing. Standard editing tools, such as spell check, grammar check, and thesaurus functions built into word processors, are permitted.
  • Do not include your name anywhere on the actual manuscript; if your name appears within the body of the text, please omit it or black it out (first name is fine, but last name must be omitted)
  • Do not include a bio or an acknowledgments page in the manuscript
  • Feel free to include a table of contents (This does not count as part of your final page count)
  • Simultaneous submissions permitted
  • Friends, family members, and former students of judges or Autumn House editors may not submit to the prize. Students do not include interactions at short-term residencies or fellowships.
  • Former employees of Autumn House, including interns, may not submit to the prize.

If you have any questions, please check our FAQ page.

Submit through Duosuma

Ira Sukrungruang is the author of four nonfiction books This Jade World (2021), Buddha’s Dog & Other Meditations (2018), Southside Buddhist (2014), and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy (2010), the short story collection The Melting Season (2016), and the poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night (2013). With friend Donna Jarrell, he co-edited two anthologies that examine the fat experience through a literary lens—What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (2003) and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology (2005). He is a former member of the Board of Trustees for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and is currently on the Advisory Board of Machete, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press dedicated to publishing innovative nonfiction by authors who have been historically marginalized.

Winners of the Autumn House Nonfiction Prize

Year Author Title Judge
2025 Starr Davis I Am Mostly Bad Blood May-lee Chai
2024 Ren Cedar Fuller Bigger: Essays Clifford Thompson
2023 Laura Jackson Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia Jenny Boully
2022 Julie Marie Wade Otherwise: Essays Lia Purpura
2021 Emily Pifer The Running Body Steve Almond
2020 Nicholas Ward All Who Belong May Enter Jaquira Díaz
2019 Melissa Wiley Skull Cathedral: A Vestigial Anatomy Paul Lisicky 
2018 Jennifer Renee Blevins Limited by Body Habitus:
An American Fat Story		 Daisy Hernández
2017 Dickson Lam Paper Sons: a memoir  Alison Hawthorne Deming
2016 Katherine McCord RUN SCREAM UNBURY SAVE Michael Martone
2015 Harrison Candelaria Fletcher Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams Dinty W. Moore
2014 Jill Kandel So Many Africas Dinty W. Moore
2013 Adam Patric Miller A Greater Monster Phillip Lopate
2012 Clifford Thompson Love for Sale and Other Essays Phillip Lopate

 

We strive to run our prizes ethically and subscribe to CLMP’s guidelines. We encourage you to reach out if you are uncertain about a potential conflict of interest.