The 2023 winner has been announced!

Entries for the 2024 competition should be postmarked between August 1 and September 30; packages must be postmarked by September 30.

The Iowa Short Fiction Award has been presented annually since 1969. In 1988 the University of Iowa Press instituted the John Simmons Short Fiction Award—named after the first director of the Press—to complement the ongoing award series. Both national competitions are juried through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Last year's judge was Gish Jen.

Gish Jen has published short work in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and dozens of other periodicals, anthologies and textbooks. Her work has been chosen for The Best American Short Stories five times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike.  Nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award, her work was featured in a PBS American Masters’ special on the American novel and is widely taught.

Jen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living; she has also delivered the William E. Massey, Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Harvard.

THANK YOU, MR NIXON is her ninth book.

Books by recent award winners can be purchased from the University of Iowa Press.

Eligibility

Any writer who has not previously published a volume of prose fiction is eligible to enter the competition. Previously entered manuscripts that have been revised may be resubmitted. Writers are still eligible if they have published a volume of poetry or any work in a language other than English or if they have self-published a work in a small print run. Writers are still eligible if they are living abroad or are non-US citizens writing in English. Current University of Iowa students are not eligible.

Manuscript

The manuscript must be a collection of short stories in English of at least 150 word-processed, double-spaced pages. We do not accept e-mail submissions. The manuscript may include a cover page, contents page, etc., but these are not required. The author's name can be on every page but this is not required. Stories previously published in periodicals are eligible for inclusion. There is no reading fee; please do not send cash, checks, or money orders. Reasonable care is taken, but we are not responsible for manuscripts lost in the mail or for the return of those not accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. We assume the author retains a copy of the manuscript.

Publication

Award-winning manuscripts will be published by the University of Iowa Press under the Press' standard contract.

Submit a manuscript for the Iowa Short Fiction Award and John Simmons Short Fiction Award

Recent Winners

2022
^{Judge: Anthony Marra}
A. J. Bermudez won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for Stories No One Hopes Are About Them. | _{^{[Publisher's Weekly review]}}

Janice Obuchowski won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for The Woods.

 

2021
^{Judge: Brandon Taylor}
Blake Sanz won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for The Boundaries of Their Dwelling. |_{^{[New York Times review]}}

Cara Blue Adams won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for You Never Get It Back. | _{^{[New York Times review]}}

 

2020
^{Judge: Tom Drury}
Sari Rosenblatt won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for Father Guards the Sheep.

Eileen O'Leary won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for Ancestry.

 

2019
^{Judge: Carmen Maria Machado}
Emily Wortman-Wunder won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for Not a Thing to Comfort You.

Ashley Wurzbacher won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for Happy Like This.

 

2018
^{Judge: Rebecca Lee}
Ruvanee Pietersz Vilhauer won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for The Water Diviner and Other Stories.

Christian Felt won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for The Lightning Jar.

 

2017
^{Judge: Andre Dubus III}
Matthew Lansburgh won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for Outside is the Ocean.

Marian Crotty won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for What Counts as Love.

 

2016
^{Judge: Bennett Sims}
Robert Oldshue won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for November Storm.

Allegra Hyde won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for Of This New World.

 

2015
^{Judge: Karen Russell}
Edward Hamlin won the Iowa Short Fiction Award
for Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories.

Charles Haverty won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award
for Excommunicados.

 

Previous Winners

2014
^{Judge: Wells Tower}
Heather A. Slomski, The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons

Kathleen Founds, Mystical Creatures Attack!

2013
^{Judge: Julie Orringer}
Tessa Mellas, Lungs Full of Noise

Kate Milliken, If I'd Known You Were Coming

2012
^{Judge: Jim Shepard}
Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses

Chad Simpson, Tell Everyone I Said Hi

2011
^{Judge: Yiyun Li}
Will Boast, Power Ballads

Josh Rolnick, Pulp and Paper

2010
^Judge:
Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell, The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti

Barbara Hamby, Lester Higata's 20th Century

2009
^Judge:
Kathryn Ma, All That Work and Still No Boys

Jennine Capó Crucet, How to Leave Hialeah: Stories from the Heart of Miami

2008
^Judge:
Glen Pourciau, Invite

Molly McNett, One Dog Happy

2007
^Judge:
Don Waters, Desert Gothic

Lee Montgomery, Whose World Is This?

2006
^Judge:
Jim Tomlinson, Things Kept, Things Left Behind

Kevin Moffett, Permanent Visitors

2005
^Judge:
Doug Trevor, The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space

Anthony Varallo, This Day in History

2004
^Judge:
Janet Desaulniers, What You've Been Missing

Merrill Feitell, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes

2003
^Judge:
Ryan Harty, Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona

Beth Helms, American Wives

2002
^Judge:
Jennifer S. Davis, Her Kind of Want

Laura Valeri, The Kind of Things Saints Do

2001
^Judge:
Sohrab Homi Fracis, Ticket to Minto: Stories of India and America

Donald Anderson, Fire Road

2000
^{Judge: Elizabeth McCracken}
John McNally, Troublemakers

Elizabeth Oness, Articles of Faith

1999
^{Judge: Marilynne Robinson}
Nancy Reisman, House Fires

Thisbe Nissen, Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night

1998
^{Judge: Stuart Dybek}
Mark Brazaitis, The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala

Kathryn Chetkovich, Friendly Fire

1997
^{Judge: Ann Beattie}
Jim Henry, Thank You for Being Concerned and Sensitive

Lisa Lenzo, Within the Lighted City

1996
^{Judge: Oscar Hijuelos}
David Borofka, Hints of His Mortality

Don Zancanella, Western Electric

1995
^{Judge: Ethan Canin}
Tereze Glück, May You Live in Interesting Times

Charles Wyatt, Listening to Mozart

1994
^{Judge: Joy Williams}
Rod Val Moore, Igloo Among Palms

Susan Onthank Mates, The Good Doctor

1993
^{Judge: Francine Prose}
Renee Manfredi, Where Love Leaves Us

Lex Williford, Macauley's Thumb

Ann Harleman, Happiness

1992
^{Judge: James Salter}
Elizabeth Searle, My Body to You

Enid Shomer, Imaginary Men

1991
^{Judge: Marilynne Robinson}
Sondra Spatt Olsen, Traps

Elizabeth Harris, The Ant Generator

1990
^{Judge: Jayne Anne Phillips}
Marly Swick, A Hole in the Language

1989
^{Judge: Gail Godwin}
Starkey Flythe, Jr., Lent: The Slow Fast

Miles Wilson, Line of Fall

1988
^{Judge: Robert Stone}
Sharon Dilworth, The Long White

Michael Pritchett, The Venus Tree

1987
^{Judge: Alison Lurie}
Abby Frucht, Fruit of the Month

Lucia Nevai, Star Game

1986
^{Judge: Tobias Wolff}
Dan O'Brien, Eminent Domain

Russell Working, Resurrectionists

1985
^{Judge: Tim O'Brien}
Robert Boswell, Dancing in the Movies

1984
^{Judge: Frederick Busch}
Susan M. Dodd, Old Wives' Tales

1983
^{Judge: Alice Adams}
Ivy Goodman, Heart Failure

1982
^{Judge: Raymond Carver}
Dianne Benedict, Shiny Objects

1981
^{Judge: Doris Grumbach}
Annabel Thomas, The Phototropic Woman

1980
^{Judge: Francine du Plessix Gray}
James Fetler, Impossible Appetites

1979
^{Judge: John Gardner}
Mary Hedin, Fly Away Home

1978
^{Judge: Stanley Elkin}
Lon Otto, A Nest of Hooks

1977
^{Judge: Leonard Michaels}
Pat Carr, The Women in the Mirror

1976
^{Judge: Donald Barthelme}
C. E. Poverman, The Black Velvet Girl

1975
^{Judge: George P. Garrett}
Barry Targan, Harry Belten and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

1974
^{Judge: William H. Gass}
Natalie L. M. Petesch, After the First Death There Is No Other

1973
^{Judge: John Hawkes}
H. E. Francis, The Itinerary of Beggars

1972
^{Judge: Joyce Carol Oates}
Jack Cady, The Burning and Other Stories

1971
^{Judge: George P. Elliott}
Philip F. O'Connor, Old Morals, Small Continents, Darker Times

1970
^{Judges: Vance Nye Bourjaily and Kurt Vonnegut}
Cyrus Colter, The Beach Umbrella