Winner of the 2026 Autumn House Fiction Prize

Autumn House is excited to announce the winner of our 2026 Fiction Prize: Snake & Submarine by Shelby Kinney-Lang, selected by Amber Sparks! The collection will be published in Fall 2027.

---

Shelby Kinney-Lang is a fiction writer from Laramie, Wyoming. He earned a master’s at the University of Oxford and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Chicago Quarterly Review, Witness, Santa Monica Review, Joyland, and elsewhere, and he is a recipient of the 2023 O. Henry Prize, selected by Lauren Groff. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in western Massachusetts.

---

We’d also like to congratulate the runner-up, finalists, and semi-finalists for their incredible manuscripts and thank everyone who submitted and trusted us with their manuscripts.

Thanks also to the judge, Amber, for all her hard work.

 

Runner-Up

Family Markers by Joel Gordon

 

Finalists

The Errand by Paul Bergstraesser

Budapest | Budapest by Michelle Donahue*

Life After the Flood by Sam Dunnington

Dreams of My Dead Husband by Jenny Wortman

 

Semi-Finalists

Ride with Me by Roxanne Doty

They Used to Call Gravity the Tendency to Fall by Molia Dumbleton

Females: Stories by Megan Howell

Woman Wisdome by Piper Huguley

Learn to Love Your New Body: Stories by Laura Morris

Forever Egg: Stories by Tierney Oberhammer

Kiko Rosa’s The F.L.I.P Show by Bino A. Realuyo

Where There Can Be No Breath at All by Aida Zilelian

 

*indicates a manuscript that was withdrawn before the winner was selected