2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist Announced
December 4, 2025
OAKLAND, CA—Twenty-eight authors have been longlisted for the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize by New Literary Project (NewLit). The annual $50,000 award honors a mid-career author of fiction in the midst of a burgeoning career, a distinguished writer who has emerged and is still emerging. The Prize celebrates past achievement and supports forthcoming work. The 2026 JCO Prize will be the eleventh such award.
The Joyce Carol Oates Prize is awarded not in recognition of a book, but for an author of national consequence—short stories and/or novels—who has published at least two notable books of fiction, and who has yet to receive capstone recognition such as a Pulitzer, National Book Award, or MacArthur. Otherwise, there are no age, geographic, or stylistic restrictions.
This is a working prize, insofar as the winner will be in brief Fall 2026 residence (seven to ten days) at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Bay Area, including Saint Mary’s College of California, where they will give public readings and talks, teach classes, and make appearances during the 2026 NewLit Roadshow.
Longlisted authors were selected from official submissions by publishers, agents, authors, and author representatives. Not-for-profit NewLit collaborates with the University of California, Berkeley, English Department. Finalists are expected to be named in March 2026, the Recipient in April 2026. Recipients and Finalists may participate in Spring 2026 events.
Since 2016, 371 authors have been longlisted, published by fifty-eight houses. Thus far, forty-four authors from twenty-six publishers have been shortlisted as finalists, and ten from eight houses have been awarded the prize. NewLit relies upon the support and good will of publishing houses in order to help sustain the prize and its dynamic educational and literary projects in support of literacy and arts education. In 2025, NewLit’s tenth anniversary, two JCO Prize Recipients were celebrated, each awarded $50,000.
2026 JCO Prize Longlisted Authors & Most Recent Book of Fiction
Marie-Helene Bertino, Exit Zero (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Matt Bondurant, North Country (Blackstone Publishing)
Elaine Castillo, Moderation (Viking)
Nathan Harrris, Amity (Little, Brown)
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, The Sisters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lily King, Heart the Lover (Grove Atlantic)
Binnie Kirshenbaum, Counting Backwards (Soho Press)
Katie Kitamura, Audition (Riverhead Books)
Erika Krouse, Save Me, Stranger (Flatiron Books)
Norman Lock, Eden's Clock (Bellevue Literary Press)
Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You (Riverhead Books)
Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You (Viking)
Stewart O’Nan, Evensong (Grove Atlantic)
Peter Orner, The Gossip Columnist's Daughter (Little, Brown)
Lori Ostlund, Are You Happy? (Astra House)
Hannah Pittard, If You Love It, Let It Kill You (Holt)
Andrew Porter, The Imagined Life (Knopf)
Eric Puchner, Dream State (Penguin Random House, Doubleday)
Jamie Quatro, Two-Step Devil (Grove Atlantic)
Patrick Ryan, Buckeye (Random House)
Danzy Senna, Colored Television (Riverhead Books)
Gary Shteyngart, Vera, Or Faith (Random House)
Joan Silber, Mercy (Counterpoint Press)
Marisa Silver, At Last (Simon & Schuster)
Susan Straight, Sacrament (Counterpoint Press)
Gabriel Tallent, Crux (Riverhead Books)
Alejandro Varela, Middle Spoon (Viking)
Bryan Washington, Palaver (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Jurors for the 2026 JCO Prize are Laura Cogan, Joseph Di Prisco, Fiona McFarlane, Molly Metherd, Geoffrey G. O’Brien, and David Wood. The jury hands up a shortlist of finalists to the New Literary Project Board of Directors, which determines the Prize Recipient. Joyce Carol Oates serves as an Honorary Director.
Previous Winners of the JCO Prize
Jennine Capó Crucet (2025)
Willy Vlautin (2025)
Ben Fountain (2024)
Manuel Muñoz (2023)
Lauren Groff (2022)
Danielle Evans (2021)
Daniel Mason (2020)
Laila Lalami (2019)
Anthony Marra (2018)
T. Geronimo Johnson (2017)
Based in Oakland, CA, NewLit is a not-for-profit created in 2015 to inspire and equip writers across the generations—in the words of Joyce Carol Oates—to “write their hearts out.” Through a variety of innovative initiatives–and generously supported by individual donors, foundations, and altruistic corporate and community leaders–the organization drives social change and unleashes artistic power. It does so through fostering arts education, nurturing new literature, supporting authors, and enhancing the lives of readers, writers, educators, and high school and college students especially from marginalized communities throughout California and the nation.
In addition to the JCO Prize, NewLit annually offers Jack Hazard Fellowships to creative writers who teach high school in the United States. Thirty-eight $5,000 Fellowships were awarded in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 to writers teaching in fifteen states. Up to ten more Jack Hazard Fellows are expected to be named in Spring 2026.
NewLit has taught over a thousand high school-age writers at no cost, thanks to visionary supporters, via Bonnie Bonetti Bell Workshops and Iris Starn Workshops, led by creative writing instructors from the UC Berkeley English Department since 2017, and Saint Mary’s College of California MFA Creative Writing Department since 2023. In Spring 2026, eleven workshops are expected to take place at Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall, Girls Inc. of Alameda County, Hope Solutions, Concord High School, and elsewhere. Eleven teaching Fellows from Cal and Saint Mary’s will conduct the NewLit workshops.
NewLit also curates a nationally distributed annual anthology of Project-related artists, including Joyce Carol Oates and Prize winners and finalists alongside younger writers published for the first time; Simpsonistas: Tales from New Literary Project Vol. 7 (Rare Bird) launched in Fall 2025.
The New Literary Project Board of Directors is guided by teachers, artists, philanthropists, corporate executives, and community leaders.
For more information, please contact:
Diane Del Signore, Executive Director, (510) 919-0970
diane@newliteraryproject.org
New Literary Project
4100 Redwood Road
Suite 20A/424
Oakland, CA 94619
EIN: 84-3898853
https://www.newliteraryproject.org/