We aim to assist writers in completing an important literary project and vision. The Unleash WIP Award offers writers support in the amount of $500 to supplement costs to support the completion of a book-length work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Writers will receive editorial feedback, coaching meetings, and an excerpt/interview feature in Unleash Lit. Previous winners include Nancy Townsley and Elizabeth Higgins.
The 2025 fall
8/1-12/15
Spring/Summer WIP Winner is ...
Nancy Townsley for Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet
Finalists
Shortlist:
Stefanie Leigh, The Truth
Nancy Townsley, Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet
Brad Kavo, City of Ruins
Ali McLafferty, The Wickedest Woman in New York
All Finalists:
Nina Burokas, Poetry is Prayer
Stefanie Leigh, The Truth
Jamie Voytsekhovska, Penny for Your Thoughts?
Christine Wade, Begin with a Body
Brad Kavo, City of Ruins
Tannis Kobrinsky, From The Wild Fields
Martha Hipley, Untitled
Nancy Townsley, Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet
Rachel Potaka, All Joy Wants Eternity
Alisha Skeel, The Silent Mark
Ali McLafferty, The Wickedest Woman in New York
Shannon King, Confessions of a Saddle Tramp: A Hundred Trails
2025 Book Prize Winner
Jamie Smith, Trojan Horses: Voices from the Opioid Crisis
Shortlist
J Drew, On the Surface of the Sun
Katherine Giuffre, A Million and a Half Reasons
Mike Heppner, Running Towards Nothing
Jamie Smith, Trojan Horses: Voices from the Opioid Crisis
Brian Mosher, Walls, or A Life Behind Bars
Longlist
Emily Hartzog, Deliveries: Women on the Brink
J Drew, On the Surface of the Sun
Melody Sinclair, Devil Wind
Jay Hodgkins, The Tunnels
Brian Mosher, Walls, or A Life Behind Bars
Scott Marcano, A Game of Solitaire
Jamie Smith, Trojan Horses: Voices from the Opioid Crisis
Laura Stanfill, The Neighborhood Dames
Katherine Giuffre, A Million and a Half Reasons
Robert McKean, Awake Through the Night
Matt Lucas, McJustice
Mike Heppner, Running Towards Nothing
Claude Bourk, Kunama
Brenda Fine, The Middle of Nowhere
Martin Gravely, Burning Sycamore
Danielle Barr, Moon People
2024 Winner: Khanh Ha, An Artist's Legacy
order here.
An Artist's Legacy is a sublime work of historical fiction anchored in the complex cultural conflicts of the First Indochina War and its climactic confrontation at Dien Bien Phu. Through rich character development, detailed cultural perspective, and expert military exposition, Khanh Ha offers a fresh and detailed perspective on a conflict, and the players who shaped and were shaped by it, that irreparably turned the course and path of 20th Century geopolitics. -J. Eric Smith, author of Ubulembu
2023 Book Prize Winner
Ubulembu and Other Stories
by
J. Eric Smith
J. Eric Smith’s Ubulembu is a remarkable mix of settings, characters, and time periods that flow effortlessly between ages past and the fraught future. Regardless of the epoch in which readers find themselves, Smith swiftly makes us at home; we become participants in his stories, not mere observers. The collection of sixteen stories is unified by an irreverent freshness delivered in consistently delicious language. Each story was my favorite until I read the next one. Smith has given readers an adventure in the truest sense: there is surprise and reward at every turn. Ubulembu is a distinctive addition to American literature.
-Richard C. McPherson, Final Judge and Author of Man Wanted in Cheyenne
2022 Book Prize Winner
Magpie
by Bronwen Carson