The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing

Restless Books congratulates Catharina Coenen for winning the 2023 Prize in Nonfiction! Her collection of essays, Unexploded Ordnance, will be published in 2025. Read the official announcement published in LitHub here. You can read excerpts from the 2023 Prize in Nonfiction finalists’ books in The Common, and browse the work of past prizewinners here.

Submissions for the 2024 Prize in Fiction will be accepted from January 1, 2024, through May 31, 2024.

 

PRIZE OVERVIEW

The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing was created in 2015 to honor outstanding debut literary works by first-generation immigrants, awarded for fiction and nonfiction in alternating years. The winner receives $10,000 and publication by Restless Books. 

Learn more about the 2024 guidelines, eligibility, and how to submit here.

Prize PHILOSOPHY

“The ethos of the modern world is defined by immigrants. Their stories have always been an essential component of our cultural consciousness, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Isabel Allende, from Milan Kundera to Yiyun Li. In novels, short stories, memoirs, and works of journalism, immigrants have shown us what resilience and dedication we’re capable of, and have expanded our sense of what it means to be global citizens. In these times of intense xenophobia, it is more important than ever that these boundary-crossing stories reach the broadest possible audience.

“With that in mind, we are proud to present The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. We are looking for extraordinary unpublished submissions from emerging writers of sharp, culture-straddling writing that addresses identity in a global age. Each year, a distinguished panel of judges will select a winning manuscript to be published by Restless Books. We can’t wait to read and share what the new voices of the world have to say.”

Ilan Stavans, Publisher


“Few literary prizes are devoted to the celebration of immigrant writing. Fewer still are dedicated to providing a platform for immigrant writers by publishing their work. Chief among these is the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing…. In Restless Books, writers have found a press that champions new voices that push boundaries of form and content.”

“A Prize for New Immigrant Writing” in Poets & Writers

 
 

MEET THE 2023 NONFICTION JUDGES

GRACE TALUSAN

Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. Born in the Philippines and raised in New England, Talusan has published in Creative Nonfiction, The New York Times, Boston magazine, The Boston Globe, and other outlets and anthologies, including Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings. In 2022, she was awarded fellowships from United States Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Brother Thomas Fund. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.

 
 
 

JIAMING TANG

Jiaming Tang is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction and was formerly the nonfiction editor at Black Warrior Review. His debut novel, Cinema Love, is forthcoming from Dutton Books/John Murray Press in Summer 2024.

 

Ilan Stavans

© Kevin Gutting

Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed WordsSpanglishDictionary DaysThe Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected StoriesThe Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among dozens of other volumes. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the International Latino Book Award, and the Jewish Book Award. Stavans’s work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted to the stage and screen. A cofounder of the Great Books Summer Program at Amherst, Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, and Dublin, he is the host of the NPR podcast "In Contrast."

 

Winners