The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing
We are thrilled to announce the finalists chosen for this year’s prize in fiction! In this ninth year of the prize, it has never felt more important to highlight themes of migration, displacement, unrest, alienation, self-determination—of seeking home, and all the reasons one leaves home to find a better way. You can read excerpts from each of the finalists’ books in The Common. The winner will be announced on November 25.
Submissions for the 2025 prize will open January 1, 2025.
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, a writing residency from Millay Arts, 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 We are looking for extraordinary unpublished submissions from emerging writers of sharp, culture-straddling writing that addresses identity in a global age.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.”
MEET THE 2024 FICTION JUDGES!
RIVKA GALCHEN
© Sandy Tait
Rivka Galchen is an award-winning novelist and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. She is the author of five books: Atmospheric Disturbances (novel, FSG, 2008), American Innovations (short stories, FSG 2014), Little Labors (essays, New Directions, 2016), Rat Rule 79 (middle grade novel, Restless Books, 2019), and Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch (novel, FSG, 2021). She has received numerous prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Fellowship, The Berlin Prize, and The William J Saroyan International Prize in Fiction, and her work has been widely anthologized. In 2010, she was named to The New Yorker’s list of 20 Writers Under 40. Galchen also holds an MD from Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
PRIYANKA CHAMPANERI
© Lauren Brennan
Priyanka Champaneri’s debut novel, The City of Good Death, won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was named one of NPR’s 2021 Books We Love. Her writing has appeared in Astra, Hindu Business Line, Lit Hub, and more. A graduate of George Mason University’s MFA program, Priyanka has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France. She is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.
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 Words, Spanglish, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and A Critic’s Journey. He has edited The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, the three-volume set Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, The 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
