The George Garrett Prize
The George Garrett Fiction Prize
$1,000
Established in 1998, The George Garrett Fiction Prize highlights one book a year for excellence in a short story collection or novel. Since 2019 the Prize comes with a $1,000 advance, a standard royalty contract, and 20 copies of the published book.
Submissions open each year on September 1 and close on November 30.
Guidelines, Submissions, and List of Previous Winners
The winner of the 2020 George Garrett Fiction Prize is Mixed Company, by Jenny Shank.
Submission Guidelines
To submit please visit our online submission manager:
https://texasreview.submittable.com/submit/1487/the-george-garrett-fiction-prize
General Guidelines
- Submissions are open September 1 - November 30.
- Submissions will be accepted through Submittable only.
- A fee of $28 must be paid at the time of submission.
- To ensure an unbiased contest, current and former students and faculty of Sam Houston State University are not eligible. Family or current or former students of the final judge are not eligible.
- Translations are not eligible.
- Winner will be announced February 2022.
Manuscript Guidelines
- Manuscripts may be novels or short story collections with a total word count of between 40,000 and 120,000 words.
- Please remove any identifying information or material from the manuscript to facilitate anonymous submissions and unbiased judging.
- Stories or excerpts may have been published individually in magazines or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Do not include an acknowledgements page.
- Please submit as a .pdf, .docx, or .doc file format.
- Please include a table of contents, title page, and page numbers.
- Text body: please double-space and use a 12-point font.
- Once the manuscript is uploaded no revisions may be submitted.
- Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify TRP immediately by withdrawing the manuscript via Submittable if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Selah Saterstrom
2021 Judge: Selah Saterstrom
TRP is honored to announce that novelist Selah Saterstrom is the 2021 Judge of the George Garrett Fiction Prize. Author of five rapturous books of prose–Rancher (2021); Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics; Slab: On that Hallelujah Day when Tiger & Preacher Met; The Meat and Spirit Plan; and The Pink Institution–Saterstrom offers readings, lectures, and workshops across the United States. She is the director of Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
George Garrett
George Garrett (1929-2008), for whom this competition is named, is the author of thirty-two books and editor or co-editor of nineteen others. He earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Princeton University and taught for forty years at the University of Virginia. Among his honors and awards are the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Sewanee Review Fellowship in Poetry, fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He won the T.S. Eliot Award of the Ingersoll Foundation, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Previous Winners
2020: Jenny Shank – Mixed Company
2019: William Black – In the Valley of the Kings
2018: Susan Lowell – Two Desperados
2017: Jim Kelly – Pitchman’s Blues
2016: James Ulmer – The Fire Doll
2015: Jeff P. Jones – Love Give Us One Death
2014: Kathy Flann – Get A Grip
2013: Stephen March – The Gold Piano
2012: Tim Parrish – The Jumper
2011: Starner Jones – Purple Church
2010: David Armand – The Pugilist’s Wife
2009: Richard Spilman – The Estate Sale
2008: Mary Kuykendall-Weber – River Roots
2007: Jack Smith – Hog To Hog
2006: Meg Moceri – Sky Full of Burdens
2005: Jacqueline Bautista – Fiestas
2004: Gail Mount – Pitching Tents
2004: Mark Brazaitis – An American Affair
2003: Steve Sherwood – Hardwater
2003: John Cottle – The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels
2002: Thomas Cobb – Acts of Contrition
2002: Clay Reynolds – Ars Poetica
2001: Naton Leslie – Marconi’s Dream and Other Stories
2000: Roger Hart – Erratics
1999: Don Meredith – Wing Walking
1998: Peter Leach – Tales of Resistance