The sarabande Prize in THE ESSAY
Submit January 1 - February 15
In celebration of Sarabande’s 30th anniversary, we are pleased to offer an increased prize in the amount of $3,000, as well as publication of the manuscript with an introduction by Alexander Chee, and a standard royalty contract.
ELIGIBILITY
This contest is open to any nonfiction writing in English. Employees and board members of Sarabande are not eligible. Agented manuscripts are not eligible. Individual essays from the manuscript may have been published previously in magazines, chapbooks of less than 48 pages, or anthologies, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Translations and previously published collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, close friends of a judge or current students in a degree-granting program with a judge are not eligible.
Submission REQUIREMENTS
Manuscript must be ANONYMOUS—the author’s name or address must not appear anywhere on the manuscript (title page should contain the title only)
Must be typed, standard font, 12 pt.
Between 100-250 pages
Manuscript must be paginated consecutively with a table of contents and acknowledgements page (a list of publications in which essays in the manuscript have appeared)
Must be accompanied by a $29 submission fee
Must be submitted electronically through Submittable
Multiple submissions are permitted if submitted separately, each with a submission fee. Simultaneous submissions to other publishers are permitted, but please withdraw the submission if accepted elsewhere.
Sarabande Books considers all finalists for publication.
2024 judge: Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all from Mariner Books. He is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, an NEA Fellow, and a Whiting Award recipient.
