The Non/Fiction Collection Prize is awarded annually to a book-length collection of short stories, essays, or a combination of the two. The prize (which in previous iterations was known as the Sandstone Prize and The Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction) carries a cash award of $1500 and publication with The Ohio State University Press under its standard contract.
Submission deadline: February 1 – March 15, 2023
- The award is open to writers of fiction and creative nonfiction, whether or not they have previously published a book.
- Eligible submissions include an unpublished manuscript of short stories or essays; two or more novellas or novella-length essays; a combination of one or more novellas/novella-length essays and short stories/essays; a combination of stories and essays. Novellas or novella-length nonfiction must be part of a larger collection. Manuscripts may be no fewer than 150 and no more than 350 typed double-spaced pages, 12-point font. Prior publication of your manuscript as a whole in any format (including electronic or self-published) makes it ineligible. Individual stories or essays that have been previously published may be included in the manuscript. Each submission must include a list of acknowledgments of previously published work (title and magazine/journal/anthology) included in the manuscript.
- All submissions must be accompanied by a $23 entry fee ($11.50 for BIPOC writers)
- If it is a hardship to meet the submission fee, please contact our editor to discuss options for a fee waiver at [email protected].
- All manuscripts will be judged anonymously. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. All identifying information will be submitted through the online submission manager only.
- Manuscripts may also be under consideration by other publishers, but if a manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere, the submission should be promptly withdrawn from consideration.
- Authors may submit more than one manuscript to the competition as long as one manuscript or a portion thereof does not duplicate material submitted in another manuscript and a separate entry fee is paid.
- Manuscripts must be received in Winter 2023 via our online submission manager: https://thejournal.submittable.com/submit
- No hard-copy manuscript submissions will be considered.
- Anyone with a personal relationship to this year’s judge should refrain from submitting.
Please direct all inquiries to: [email protected]
About the 2023 Judge:
Lee Martin is the author of the novels, The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; Break the Skin; Late One Night; Yours, Jean; and The Glassmaker’s Wife. He has also published four memoirs, From Our House, Turning Bones, Such a Life, and Gone the Hard Road in addition to two short story collections, The Least You Need to Know, and, most recently, The Mutual UFO Network. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Glimmer Train, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Essays. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he is a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of English and a past winner of the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.
The 2022 Winner: 
Mary Quade is the author of the poetry collections Guide to Native Beasts (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) and Local Extinctions (Gold Wake) and the recipient of four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards for both poetry and creative nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Terrain.org, West Branch, Bennington Review, and other journals. She is a professor of English at Hiram College, where she teaches creative writing.
Finalists
Penned by Jonathan Jones
Mere Vessels by Brett Armes
The Summer Before the Fall by Rebecca Starks
Last Map by Joe Sacksteder
Semifinalists for the 2022 Non/Fiction Collection Prize
Storm Damage by Michelle Ruby
The Mother Who Couldn’t Describe A Thing if She Could by Shareen Murayama
Pearl Country by Austin Smith
Delinquents by Nick Gardner
Happier Far by Diane Mehta
Fairy Tales for the Dying by A. Molotkov
The Mapless World by Jill McCabe Johnson
What We Don’t Wholly Believe by Nathan Long
Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival by Joeann Hart
On Extinction Events by Matthew Nye
Kaput by Lana Spenl
What Did You Do Today by Anthony Varallo
West of Destry by Kevin Grauke
Intricate Birds by Jennifer Bullis
Midwestern Witch by Jenny Hatchadorian
The Box in Which We Live by Samuel Barber
Ruined A Little When We Were Born by Tara Isabel Zambrano
When You Think About Paris And Other Stories by Catherine Uroff
Renaissance and Other Collected Stories by Chuck Spresser
A Thousand Lives Ahead by Redfern Barrett
Fly Fishing With God by Andrew Bertaina
Collateral Citizens by Khem Aral
The Last Jews of Long Island by Michael Orbach
About the 2022 Judge:
Michelle Herman is the author of three collections of personal essays, a collection of stories and novellas, and four novels, including her newest, Close-Up. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Sun, American Scholar, O, the Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and she writes a weekly column for Slate. A co-founder of the MFA program at Ohio State, where she has taught since 1988, she also founded and directs a graduate interdisciplinary program across the arts at OSU.
The 2021 Winner:
Rebecca Bernard is the winner of the 2021 Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Her fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Southwest Review, Pleiades, and Witness among other journals. Her work received notable mention in the Best American Short Stories of 2018. She is an Assistant Professor in the English department at Angelo State University, and she serves as a Fiction Editor at The Boiler.
2021 prize judge Nick White says of Rebecca Bernard’s work: “Each story walked such a tightrope – from the first one onward, there were moments these characters and their situations had me gasping, shuddering, looking up from the page to catch my breath.”
Bernard’s collection is forthcoming from Mad Creek Books, the literary trade imprint of The Ohio State University Press.
Finalists
Inadequate Methods of Self-Preservation by Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross
All Rivers Flow Into the Sea & Other Stories by Khanh Ha
Semifinalists for the 2021 Non/Fiction Collection Prize
Every Goddamn Day by Carrie Grinstead
Pulling Up Roots: A Mennonite Girlhood Remembered by Mary Hostetter
The Amnesiac in the Maze by Michael Czyzniejewski
Day of The Rat by Clancy McGilligan
Zoo World by Mary Quade
Menagerie & Other Beasts by Sean Bernard
Wild Gods by Mike McClelland
Even Angels Are Astonished by Courtney Sender
The Paper Anniversary: Stories by Dinah Cox
About the 2021 Judge:
Originally from Mississippi, Nick White is the author of the novel How to Survive a Summer (Blue Rider/Penguin, 2017) and the story collection Sweet and Low. He is an Assistant Professor of English at The Ohio State University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in a variety of places, including The Kenyon Review, Guernica, Catapult, The Hopkins Review, Indiana Review,The Literary Review, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. He is currently at work on a new novel.