University at Buffalo (UB)
NeMLA Annual Book Award
NeMLA awards two Book Prizes every year for:
- the best unpublished book-length manuscript on any of NeMLA's focal literatures, languages, media, or cultures
- the best unpublished fiction book in English
Manuscripts cannot be under review at a press.
On this page:
Application Process
For consideration, please email the following to book.award@nemla.org by October 15.
- A copy of the manuscript
- An overview of the proposed book (2 to 3 single-spaced pages)
- A round-up of competing books
- A brief explanation of the uniqueness of the proposed project
The NeMLA book committee may opt not to give an award any given year if the manuscripts are not ready for publication.
The prizes include:
- A $500 cash prize
- NeMLA's assistance with contacting presses about the publication of their manuscripts (at the winners' discretion).
The winners will be announced at the Sunday membership business meeting at NeMLA's annual convention.
Criteria
- The authors must be current NeMLA members with a demonstrated commitment to NeMLA (a convention participant, or a member for at least one year in the last five years).
- Manuscripts must be written in English.
- Unrevised dissertations and MA theses will not be considered for this award.
- Manuscripts under review or under contract with a publisher will not be considered for this award.
Creative Writing Judge
Patrick Thomas Henry is the fiction and poetry editor for Modern Language Studies. His short stories and essays have recently appeared in Carolina Quarterly, West Branch online, JMWW, Sundog, and North Dakota Quarterly, amongst others. His work was also selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020. The manuscript of his short story collection, Practice for Becoming a Ghost: Stories, was selected by Jean McGarry as the winner of the 2022 NeMLA Creative Writing Book Award; the manuscript was also a semifinalist for the 2022 Iron Horse Literary Review/Texas Tech University Press First Book Prize. He is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of North Dakota. Find him online at patrickthomashenry.com or on Twitter.
Past Book Award Winners
- 2023: Alison Cotti-Lowell, New England Conservatory, Home and Away: Romantic British Citizenship and the Transatlantic World
- 2021: Matthew Kilbane, Cornell University, The Lyre Book: Modern Poetic Media
- 2020: Amanda Lagji, Pitzer College, Waiting for Now: Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
- 2020 Honorable Mention: Syrrina Haque, Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Dialogue on Partition: Literature Knows No Borders (Lexington Books, 2021)
- 2019: Mary C. Foltz, Lehigh University, American Sh*t: Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
- 2018: Amy Paeth, University of Pennsylvania, State vs. Culture (now The American Poet Laureate: A History of U.S. Poetry and the State, Columbia UP, 2023)
- 2018 Honorable Mention: Stephen Zimmerly, University of Indianapolis, The Sidekick Comes of Age (Lexington Books, 2019)
- 2017: Regina Galasso, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Translating New York: The City's Languages in Iberian Literatures (Liverpool UP, 2018) and Katie Daily-Bruckner, United States Military Academy, Rejection and Disaffiliation in Twenty-First Century Immigration Narratives (Palgrave Pivot, 2018)
- 2015: Ian Thomas Fleishman, University of Pennsylvania, An Aesthetics of Injury: The Narrative Wound from Baudelaire to Tarantino (Northwestern UP, 2018)
- 2014: Bartholomew Brinkman, Framingham State University, Poetic Modernism in the Culture of Mass Print (Johns Hopkins UP, 2016)
- 2013: Lee Manion, University of Missouri, Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge UP, 2014)
- 2012: Colleen Kennedy-Karpat, Bilkent University, Rogues, Romance, and Race: Exoticism in French Fiction Cinema, 1930-1939 (Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2013)
- 2012 Honorable Mention: Renée M. Silverman, Florida International University, Mapping the Landscape, Remapping the Text: Spanish Poetry from Antonio Machado's Campos de Castilla to the First Avant-Garde (1909-1925) (U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Dept of Romance Studies, 2014)
- 2011: Daniel Brayton, Middlebury College, Shakespeare’s Global Ocean: Ecocriticism and the Marine Environment (now Shakespeare's Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration, U of Virginia Press, 2012)
- 2010: Carey Kasten, Fordham University, Traditional Iconoclasm: The Auto Sacramental in Twentieth-Century Spain (now The Cultural Politics of Twentieth-Century Spanish Theater: Representing the Auto Sacramental, Bucknell UP, 2012)
- 2009: Kristin J. Jacobson, Stockton College, Domestic Geographies: Neodomestic American Fiction (The Ohio State UP, 2010)
- Erin Hurley, McGill University, National Mimesis: Figuring Performance-Nation Relations in Quebec (now National Performance: Representing Quebec from Expo 67 to Céline Dion, U of Toronto Press, 2010)
- 2006: Annette Levine, Ithaca College, Cry for Me Argentina: The Performance of Trauma in the Short Narrative of Aida Bortnik, Griselda Gambaro, and Tuana Mercado (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2008)
- Jennifer A. Zachman, Saint Mary’s College, Playing Gender on the Contemporary Spanish Stage
- Julia M. Wright, Wilfrid Laurier University, Blake, Nationalism and the Politics of Alienation (Ohio UP, 2004)
- 1999: Michael West, University of Pittsburgh, Transcendental Wordplay: America’s Romantic Punsters and the Search for the Language of Nature (Ohio UP, 2000)
- 1991: Elzbieta Sklodowska, Washington University in St. Louis, Testimonio hispanoamericano (Peter Lang, 1992)
- 1990: Tom Peterson, University of Georgia, The Paraphrase of an Imaginary Dialogue (Peter Lang, 1994)
- 1988: Janet Groth, Plattsburgh State University of New York, Edmund Wilson: A Critic for Our Time (Ohio UP, 1989)
- 2023: Catey Christiansen, North Carolina State University, Dead Name Anthology
- 2023 Honorable Mention: Annika Nerf, SUNY University at Albany, Ships in the Night
- 2022: Patrick Thomas Henry, University of North Dakota, Practice for Becoming a Ghost: Stories
- 2022 Runner-Up: Allison Brooks, Kent State University, Great Grandma’s Grimoire