The 2026 Georgia Review Prose Prize is open November 1, 2025 to January 15, 2026, and will be judged by Kiese Laymon. The best short story and essay will both be published in The Georgia Review. The overall winner, chosen between the two, will receive $1,500. The runner-up will receive $600. All entries will be considered for publication. We invite writers from all backgrounds to submit.
Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the genre-bending novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir Heavy won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” by The New York Times. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Oxford American, Laymon is at work on several new projects, including the long poem Good God, the horror comedy And So On, the children’s book City Summer, Country Summer, and the film Heavy: An American Memoir. He is the founder of the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, a program aimed at getting young people and their parents more comfortable reading, writing, revising, and sharing.
The winner and runner-up of last year’s prose prize can be read in our Winter 2025 issue, arriving in December.
Submissions must be sent either through Submittable between November 1 and January 15 or by regular mail postmarked within the same span of time. An entry should include either one short story or one essay. Only one entry per writer. No translations. Submissions cost $25. Simultaneous submissions are permitted; however, writers must notify us immediately if the work is accepted elsewhere.
Postal submissions: Include (1) a cover letter that provides your phone number and email address and (2) a check for $25 for your entry fee. Checks should be made payable to The Georgia Review, and envelopes should be addressed to The Georgia Review Prose Prize, The Georgia Review, Room 706A Main Library, the University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-9009. If you’d prefer to be notified by post, please also include a self-addressed, stamped envelope; otherwise, we will notify you by email.
Please note that students, faculty, staff, and administrators currently affiliated with the University of Georgia are ineligible for the contest. Intimate friends, relatives, colleagues, and former or current students of a judge are also ineligible to enter.
We can’t wait to read your work!