Thank you for your interest in the 21st Century Essays series. We are accepting submissions March 1st-April 30th. Please include as much of the following information as you can when you submit your manuscript materials:

• Title of your manuscript
• General description/overview of your project and what makes it unique. Why would people want to read it? What makes it different and special?
• At least two sample chapters (and expected date of completion), or the full manuscript. Full manuscripts are welcome!
• Word count of the project (we publish manuscripts that range from 45,000-85,000 words), along with information about any images you plan to include.
• CV or Resume

If you are unsure if your project fits the series, please contact Kristen Elias Rowley at madcreekbooks@osu.edu.

We make every effort to review submissions within 8-10 weeks of the close of the submissions period, so please refrain from sending follow-up inquiries before the end of that time. Thank you!

More info about the series:

This is the first and only major series that announces its focus on the essay, a genre whose plasticity, timelessness, popularity, and centrality to nonfiction writing make it instantly important in the field of nonfiction literature, with books that use words as artistic medium, appealing to literary, academic, and trade audiences. 21st Century Essays is a major addition to the possibilities of contemporary literary nonfiction, focusing on that central, frequently chimerical, and invariably supple form: The Essay.

The 21st Century Essays series is edited by David Lazar, Professor at Columbia College Chicago, and Patrick Madden, Professor at Brigham Young University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Lazar is the founding editor of Hotel Amerika and is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction for 2015–2016. Lazar's essay collections include I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms, On Character, Occasional Desire and The Body of Brooklyn. Madden is the author of two books of essays, Sublime Physick and Quotidiana (ForeWord magazine and Association for Mormon Letters awards winner) and he is the coeditor with Lazar of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays.

Editorial Advisory Board:

Robert Atwan, Mary Cappello, John D’Agata, Wayne Koestenbaum, Phillip Lopate, Maggie Nelson, Lia Purpura, Claudia Rankine, David Shields

$1000 and publication with Mad Creek Books (an imprint of The Ohio State University Press) will be awarded to one book length collection of essays each year.
Submission window: March 1-April 30. Please note that all manuscripts submitted to the prize will also be considered for general publication in the 21st Century Essays series.
 

• The award is open to all writers for first books of essays. (Writers may have published books previously in other genres.)
• The award is open to all writers regardless of citizenship.
• Prior publication of your manuscript as a whole in any format (including electronic or self-published) makes it ineligible. Individual essays that have been previously published may be included in the manuscript.
• Simultaneous submission should be noted, and prompt withdrawal if accepted for publication elsewhere is required.
• Authors may submit more than one manuscript to the competition as long as an entry fee is paid for each submission.
• Previously submitted manuscripts are eligible.

Please include as much of the following information as you can when you submit your manuscript materials:
 

• Title of your manuscript
• General description (1-2 pages) of your project as well as target audience.
• Word count of the project (we publish manuscripts that range from 40,000-85,000 words), along with information about any images you plan to include.
• Bio, resume, or CV
•  List of acknowledgments of previously published work (title and magazine/journal/anthology) included in the manuscript.

Previous prize winners include Lynette D'Amico (Men I Hate), Amy Lee Scott (When the World Explodes), Agata Brewer (The Hunger Book), Christine Imperial (Don't Mistake Me for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues, forthcoming 2023), Hasanthika Sirisena (Dark Tourist and Other Essays), M.I. Devine (Warhol's Mother's Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop), Sonya Bilocerkowycz (On Our War Home From the Revolution), and Kisha Schlegel (Fear Icons).

 We make every effort to review submissions within 8 weeks of the close of the submission period.  Please send questions to Kristen Elias Rowley at eliasrowley.1@osu.edu. Thank you!

About the Judges:

David Lazar's books include Celeste Holm Syndrome, Don’t Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn’t Seen, I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms, After Montaigne (co-edited with Patrick Madden), and many more. A frequent Best American Essays honoree, Lazar is founding editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika and was a Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction.

Patrick Madden is the author of Disparates, Sublime Physick, and Quotidiana, and coeditor (with David Lazar) of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays. His books have won Independent Publisher, Foreword Indies, and Association of Mormon Letters awards, among others. He currently serves as vice president of the NonfictionNOW conference and coeditor of Fourth Genre.

Kristen Elias Rowley is Editorial Director of OSU Press, where she created and launched their Mad Creek Books imprint in 2017. Books she's edited have won International Latino Book Awards, Lambda awards, numerous state book awards, PEN prizes, the Grub Street Prize, and several have been selected as National Book Critics Circle and National Book Award finalists. She has been acquiring and editing books for 19 years.

Thank you for your interest in the Machete nonfiction series. Please include as much of the following information as you can when you submit your manuscript materials:
 

• Title of your manuscript
• General description/overview (1-2 pages) of your project as well as target audience
• At least two sample chapters (and expected date of completion), or the full manuscript. 
• Word count of the project (typically we publish manuscripts that range from 45,000-80,000 words), along with information about any images you plan to include.
• Explanation of what makes the project unique or important (new form, different subject, new view on an old subject). You can include a round-up of competing books (if any exist), and a brief explanation of the uniqueness of your proposed book. Why would people want to read it? What makes it different and special?
• CV or Resume

If you are unsure if your project fits the series, please contact Kristen Elias Rowley at eliasrowley.1@osu.edu.
  We make every effort to review submissions within 8-10 weeks, so please refrain from sending follow-up inquiries before the end of that time. Thank you!
More information about the series:
  The series is explicitly interested in the full array of human identities and experiences. The machete enables path-clearing; it hacks new trails and carves out new directions. The Machete series celebrates and shepherds unique new voices into publication, providing a platform for writers whose work intervenes in dangerous ways.

  The series is edited by Joy Castro and Rachel Cochran.

Joy Castro, Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and author and editor of several books of nonfiction including Island of Bones: Essays, The Truth Book: A Memoir, and Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family. Her books have won the Nebraska Book Award and an International Latino Book Award and she has been a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award.
Rachel Cochran teaches at Marian University in Indianapolis. Her debut novel, The Gulf, was released in 2023 by HarperCollins. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the Masters Review, New Ohio Review, Glassworks, and others, and have won the Masters Review New Voices Award (second place) and the New Ohio Review’s nonfiction contest.
Editorial Advisory Board
Chris Abani, Rigoberto González, Daisy Hernández, Matthew Salesses, Ralph Savarese, & Ira Sukrungruang

Thank you for your interest in the Latinographix series. Please include as much of the following information as you can when you submit your manuscript materials:
 

• Title of your manuscript
• General description/overview (1-2 pages) of your project as well as target audience
• At least two sample chapters (and expected date of completion), or the full manuscript. Full manuscripts are welcome!
• Project details: page length; trim size; color profile (black and white, two color, or full color); any other information you wish to relay regarding design or layout
• Explanation of what makes the project unique or important (new form, different subject, new view on an old subject). You can include a round-up of competing books (if any exist), and a brief explanation of the uniqueness of your proposed book. Why would people want to read it? What makes it different and special?
• CV or Resume

If you are unsure if your project fits the series, please contact Kristen Elias Rowley at eliasrowley.1@osu.edu.
We make every effort to review submissions within 6-8 weeks, so please refrain from sending followup inquiries before the end of that time. Thank you!

More information about the series:
Projects in the series take up themes of all kinds, exploring topics from immigration to family, education to identity. The series provides a place for exploration and boundary pushing, and celebrates hybridity, experimentation, and creativity. Projects will be produced with quality and care, and will exemplify the full breadth of creative visual work being created by today’s Latinx artists. The series is edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, University Distinguished Scholar and Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of 24 books, including the graphic short story collection, Through Fences, winner of the 2025 Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education Outstanding Book Award in Fiction.