The KELLMAN Prize for Immigrant LITERATURE
PRIZE OVERVIEW
In 2015, the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing was created to honor outstanding debut literary works by first-generation immigrants whose work examines how immigration shapes our lives, our communities, and our world. For the tenth anniversary of the prize, Restless Books’ unstintingly generous board member, Steven G. Kellman—whose grandparents were immigrants to the United States—endowed the prize so that it may continue in perpetuity. The award will now be known as the Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature. The winner receives $10,000, a writing residency from Millay Arts, and publication by Restless Books. Beginning in 2025, the prize no longer alternates between fiction and nonfiction, but accepts submissions in both genres each year.
You can browse the work of past prizewinners here. The 2025 finalists have been announced by The Common—please enjoy samples of their brilliant work at the link. The winner will be announced by LitHub on December 8.
Submissions for the 2026 prize will be open from January 1 through May 31, 2026. Click here for guidelines and eligibility details.
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 Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature. We are looking for extraordinary unpublished submissions from emerging immigrant writers of sharp, culture-straddling writing that addresses identity in a global age.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.
“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 2025 JUDGES!
Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us, All Our Names, How To Read the Air, and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, all New York Times Notable Books. Born in Ethiopia, his articles and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. His most recent novel, Someone Like Us, was chosen as one of President Obama’s ten best books of the year. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College and the founder and director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.
Rajiv Mohabir
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of Cutlish (2021, Four Way Books, finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award), The Cowherd’s Son (2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize), and The Taxidermist’s Cut (2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017), and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (2019), which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His essays can be found in places like the Asian American Writers Workshop’s The Margins, Bamboo Ridge Journal, Moko Magazine, Cherry Tree, Kweli, and others, and he has a “Notable Essay” in Best American Essays 2018. Currently he is an assistant professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College. His debut memoir, Antiman, won the 2019 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.
Ilan Stavans
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
