The George Garrett Prize

The George Garrett Fiction Prize

$1,000 + Publication

2023 Judge:

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 July 1 and close on September 30.

Guidelines, Submissions, and List of Previous Winners

Winner of the 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize:

Churn, by Chloe Chun Seim

Selected by Vi Khi Nao

Submission Guidelines

To submit please visit our online submission manager.

General Guidelines

Submissions are open July 1 - September 30.
Submissions are accepted through Submittable only.
A fee of $28 must be paid at the time of submission.
Open to anyone writing in English. Translations are not eligible.
Stories or excerpts may have been published individually in magazines or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished.
Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please notify TRP immediately by withdrawing the manuscript via Submittable if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Current and former students and faculty of Sam Houston State University are not eligible.
Family and current or former students* of the final judge or TRP staff are not eligible.
Current and former TRP authors are not eligible.
Submitters must be 18+ years of age.
Winner receives a $1,000 advance, a standard royalty contract, and 20 copies of the published book.

*Writers who studied with the final judge or TRP staff for a semester-length period are not eligible. Writers who studied with the final judge or TRP staff for two-week residencies, single workshops, or other instances less than a semester in length are eligible, provided the work submitted is previously unseen by the TRP staff or the final judge.

Manuscript Guidelines

Manuscripts may be novels or short story collections with a total word count of between 40,000 and 100,000 words.
Please include a table of contents, title page, and page numbers.
Please double-space and use a 12pt. font.
Do not include an acknowledgments page.
Submissions are anonymous. Please remove any identifying information from the manuscript.
Submit as a .pdf, .docx, or .doc file format.
No revisions will be accepted once the manuscript is uploaded.

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

2022: Chloe Chun Seim – Churn

2021: J.E. Sumerau – Transmission

2020: Jenny Shank – Mixed Company

2019: William Black – In the Valley of the Kings

2018: Susan Lowell – Two Despe rados

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