Mad Creek Books is the literary trade imprint of The Ohio State University Press. With a mission to foster creativity, innovate, and illuminate, Mad Creek Books champions diverse and creative literary nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.
21st Century Essays
A vehicle to discover, publish, and promote some of the most daring, ingenious, and artistic new nonfiction work being done in the essay.
David Lazar and Patrick Madden, series editors
Submissions to the series are accepted annually March 1 - April 30.
The Gournay Prize
The Gournay Prize selects one book length collection of essays each year to receive $1,000 and 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).
Submissions to The Gournay Prize are accepted annually March 1 - April 30.
Machete
This series showcases fresh stories, innovative forms, and books that break new ground in nonfiction—memoir, personal and lyric essay, literary journalism, cultural meditations, short shorts, hybrid essays, graphic pieces, and more—from authors whose writing has historically been marginalized, ignored, and passed over. The series is explicitly interested in not only ethnic and racial diversity, but also gender and sexual diversity, neurodiversity, physical diversity, religious diversity, cultural diversity, and diversity in all of its manifestations.
Joy Castro and Rachel Cochran, series editors.
Latinographix
This series showcases graphic novels, memoir, nonfiction, comic books, and more by Latinx writers and artists. The series welcomes projects with any balance of text and visual narrative, from larger graphic narratives to collections of vignettes or serial comics, in color or black and white, fiction or nonfiction.
Frederick Luis Aldama, series editor.
Other Prize Series on Mad Creek Books
The AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction
Winner of this annual prize competition receives publication by Mad Creek Books and $5,500. Submissions accepted annually January 1-February 28 through AWP. For more information about this prize, or to submit, see AWP's Submittable page: https://awp.submittable.com/submit.
The Journal Non/Fiction Collection Prize
Winner of this annual prize competition receives publication by Mad Creek Books and $1,500. Submissions accepted annually February 1-March 15 through The Journal. For more information on submitting, or about this prize, see The Journal website: http://thejournalmag.org/book-prizes/prose-prize.
The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize
Winner of this annual prize competition receives publication by Mad Creek Books and $2,500. Submissions are accepted annually September 1-October 12 through The Journal. For more information on submitting or about this prize, see The Journal website: https://thejournalmag.org/book-prizes/wheeler-prize
For more information contact Mad Creek Books Editorial Director Kristen Elias Rowley at eliasrowley.1@osu.edu, or visit our website: https://ohiostatepress.org/madcreek.htm
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 eliasrowley.1@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!
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 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 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 madcreekbooks@osu.edu. Thank you!