It’s been our immense pleasure to read such talented entries this year, and we had a deeply difficult time choosing between them. Below are our short- and longlist honorees.

Dzanc Books is pleased to announce the winner of this year’s Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction: Shipikisha by Mubanga Kalimamukwento. It was selected from a pool of hundreds of manuscripts and eventually judged by three celebrated Dzanc Books authors: Farah Ali (The River, The Town), Chika Unigwe (The Middle Daughter), and Sarah Yahm (Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation), winner of last year’s Prize for Fiction.

"Linking seemingly discordant experiences so apt they ring harmonious as playground song, Van Eerden ruminates within the mundane, connecting memories of past loves and losses to moments here and gone in a spidery blink, burrowing deep in search of illuminating connections. This moving collection explores the poetry only found in meditation on our deepest longings."

—Southern Literary Review

We’re very excited to share that Afabwaje Kurian’s debut novel, Before the Mango Ripens received a longlist mention for the Aspen Words Literary Prize! The Aspen Words Literary Prize is an annual award for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.

We’re so honored that Dzanc Books is one of the recipients of the MACC Operational Support Grant! Thank you very much to The Michigan Arts and Cultural Council and that National Endowment of Arts for your generous support, we are extremely grateful.

"In the emotive, deeply loving, and sometimes erotic pages of Tara Isabel Zambrano's collection Ruined a Little when We Are Born, we meet a talking orgasm with star dust in her edges, a girl who grows extra hands when her mother dies, a skinny boy who makes love to the Devil, thirsty ghosts. In these stories, whole lives, marriages, births, deaths, and afterlifes unfold in the words and blank spaces of just a few pages. The stories build on one another - sensory, sensual, pulsing with life and color -- leaving the reader breathless and starstruck by the wildly inventive twists of Zambrano's vibrant prose." –Alex DiFrancesco, author of Transmutation

“BEFORE THE MANGO RIPENS is one of those rare novels that seems to capture the whole world between its covers. Afabwaje Kurian choreographs and cross-cuts among so many elements of language and beliefs, cultures and histories, and she does so on so many scales—from the individual to the familial, the communal to the national, and to the marvelously cosmic as well—and she does all that with such clear-eyed artfulness, elegance, and seriousness, that no summary or paraphrase can approach an adequate description of its riches. Just turn to page one and start reading."— Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize Award winning author of TINKERS

“The people in these stories need Meg Pokrass. Their lives are tough but her imagination is the fire-lasso that can save them, save us.” –Bob Hicok, author of Elegy Owed and Sex & Love

Celebrate Lindsey’s newest novel, The Avian Hourglass with her this fall! With seven events scheduled throughout the Midwest (and hopefully a couple more to come!), there are many opportunities to meet Lindsey, discuss her book, ask her questions, and get your signed copy. Check out her website for more details about each event!

"The Avian Hourglass is splendidly odd and arresting. Drager establishes her themes of loss and duplication and catastrophe and estrangement and connection and sends them orbiting perfectly around each other, round after round, in an orrery of grieving and wonder."—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations and The Illumination

We’re so honored that Dzanc House at Dzanc Books is one of the recipients of the AAACF Arts & Culture Grant AND the AAACF EmpowerMENt Grant!

“William Gay is richly gifted: a seemingly effortless storyteller…a writer of prose that’s fiercely wrought, pungent in detail yet poetic in the most welcome sense.” -The New York Times Book Review

Lindsey Drager, the author of four wonderful Dzanc novels (The Sorrow Proper, 2015; The Lost Daughter Collective, 2017; The Archive of Alternate Endings, 2019; and The Avian Hourglass, 2024), sat down with designer Steven Seighman in an interview for Spine magazine about her forthcoming novel, The Avian Hourglass.

We’re excited to announce that Tara Isabel Zambrano’s Ruined a Little When We Are Born will be available as an audiobook! Announced on June 24th, audio rights for Ruined a Little When We Are Born were sold to Kim Budnick at Tantor Media.

Lance Olsen returns to Between the Covers to discuss his two new books, his uncategorizable multiverse fiction Absolute Away, and his new collection of philosophical essays and interviews on writing Shrapnel:Contemplations.

“Plainspoken protest stories that balance head and heart in their attempts to evoke empathy… Ehtesham-Zadeh’s admiration and indignation for the women of Iran always shine through.” –Kirkus Reviews

"In Urabá, Columbia, the banana trade is an extremely violent and unsettling history, one that Grostephan resists sugarcoating. Unlike an actual banana, there is nothing banal or mild about The Banana Wars. Told from several compelling perspectives, this novel is blistering, unflinching, and hard to put down."—Jen Beagin, author of Big Swiss and Vacuum in the Dark

“A surreal story bridges historical trauma with existential nightmares. ... Olsen depicts the horrors of history and more speculative anxieties with equal power. Impossible to classify, this novel raises big questions about memory and identity.” –Kirkus Reviews

Mom Egg Review released the April edition of their monthly online column, MER Bookshelf, and three Dzanc titles made the cut!

“Matthew Baker’s writing can only be described in the many yets it creates: humorous yet disturbing, gripping yet patient, timely yet timeless. In The Sentence, Baker offers a precise, visionary story of survival and community told in the form of a sentence diagram. On its surface a dystopian cautionary tale, this novella is a startling reflection on language, trust, and desperation in the face of fascism. This is Baker’s most exciting work yet.”— Isle McElroy