Congratulations to the 2019 Brighthorse Prize Winners
The Brighthorse Prize in Poetry
Winner: Michael Pearce for Santa Lucia by Starlight
Finalists: Joel Long for Pharmacy and Kateri Kosek for American Eclipse
The Brighthorse Prize in Short Fiction
Winner: Lucy Ferriss for Foreign Climes
Finalists: Melissa Llanes Brownlee for Hard Skin and Ernest Finney for California Stories.
The Brighthorse Prize in the Novel
Winner: Jane Harrington for In Circling Flight
Finalists: James Magruder for Save Yourself and Lis Anna-Langston for Crucifix Built for Two.
The winners receive $1,000 each and publication by Brighthorse Books. For information about the 2020 contest and to submit, go to
2019 Contest Update
Greetings, writers!
This year’s contest is going great! If you haven’t submitted yet, The Brighthorse Book Prize, now in its sixth year, is an annual awards series honoring unpublished novels, collections of short fiction, and poetry collections. There are three prizes for this year's competition.
Authors writing in English—regardless of nationality, residence, or publication history—may submit their work. Winning manuscripts will be published by Brighthorse Books. A $1,000 prize and publication will be offered to one winning writer in each category. Beyond the single winner in each category, Brighthorse may offer to publish other manuscripts submitted to the competition.
The deadline for this year’s competition is August 16, 2019, so there is still time to enter!
For more information or to submit, go to https://brighthorsebooks.submittable.com/submit.
Brighthorse looks forward to reading your work!
Winners and Finalists for the 2018 Brighthorse Prize
Each year, the pool of submissions for The Brighthorse Prize grows larger than the previous year’s, making it a difficult pleasure to choose winners. Thank you to all those who submitted manuscripts to the 2018 contest. We only wish we had the resources to publish all of the excellent manuscripts we received.
POETRY
Winner:
Mara Adamitz Scrupe’s In the Bare Bones House of Was
Finalists:
Ruth Kessler’s The Country of Elsewheres
Lilo Way’s Wingbone
SHORT FICTION
Winner:
Barbara de la Cuesta’s The Place Where Judas Lost His Boots
Finalists:
Rachel Swearingen’s How to Walk on Water and Other Stories
Emily Wortman-Wunder’s Not a Thing to Comfort You
NOVEL
Winner:
Kavita A. Jindal’s Manual For A Decent Life
Finalists:
Kristen Daniels’ Long Time Gone
Janet Irvin’s A Principle of Light