Prizes

The Novel Prize

The Novel Prize, a biennial award for book-length works of literary fiction written in English by both published and unpublished writers from around the world, will run (on alternating years) alongside The Poetry in Translation Prize. Launched in 2020 also by New Directions, Giramondo Publishing, and Fitzcarraldo Editions, The Novel Prize has been won by Jessica Au, Jonathan Buckley, Anne de Marcken, and Giada Scodellaro, whose novel Ruins, Child will be published on April 7, 2026.

*Submissions to the Novel Prize are open April 1, 2026 through June 1, 2026.*

Guidelines for entry to the Novel Prize:

Please read these eligibility and entry rules carefully before submitting. Submission of an entry is taken as acceptance of the entry rules. For any queries not covered below, please contact editorial [at] ndbooks.com.

1. The competition is open to published and unpublished writers around the world. Writers based in the Americas should submit via New Directions. Writers based in Africa and Europe should submit to Fitzcarraldo Editions; writers based in Asia and Australasia should submit to Giramondo.

2. Entrants residing in the Americas should submit a full manuscript of their novel (minimum 30,000 words) to novelprize [at] ndbooks.com. The manuscript should be double-spaced, 12pt.

3. Each submission should include a cover letter including a biographical note, contact details and brief outline of the novel.

4. The submission must be original.

5. Only submissions received by 8PM on 1 June 2026 (EDT) will be considered.

6. Entries that are incomplete, corrupted or submitted after the deadline will not be considered.

7. The entry must be the entrant’s own original creation and must not infringe upon the right or copyright of any person or entity.

8. Co-authored entries will not be accepted.

9. Writers who have existing contracts, or who have previously held contracts, with publishers for books of fiction or non-fiction are eligible to enter.

10. Writers who have published writing (fiction or non-fiction) in magazines and journals are eligible to enter.

11. Writers who have published books of poetry are eligible to enter.

12. Writers may submit only one manuscript per iteration of the prize.

13. The novel must be written in English (no translations).

14. Submissions may be made by the author of the novel or (if they have one) their agent.

15. There are no age restrictions, and we welcome submissions from writers of all backgrounds.

16. Submissions from writers residing outside of the Americas will not be considered or passed on to the relevant publishers.

17. All submissions should include page numbers.

18. The novel must be original and should not have been previously published anywhere in full. Published work is taken to mean published in any printed, publicly accessible form, e.g. anthology, magazine, newspaper. It is also taken to mean published online, with the exception of personal blogs and personal websites.

19. A shortlist will be announced in January 2027. The winner will be announced in February 2027, and published in early 2028.

20. New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and Giramondo reserve the right to organize a meeting or phone call with all shortlisted writers to discuss their novel before the award of the prize.

21. Unsuccessful entrants will not be contacted.

22. No editorial feedback will be provided to unsuccessful entrants.

23. The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the judging process.

24. New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and Giramondo will have the exclusive world rights to publish the winning novel.

25. New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and Giramondo reserve the right not to award the prize this year, or to make multiple offers of publication.

26. Only submissions which meet all Terms and Conditions will be considered.

27. By entering this competition, each entrant agrees to be bound by these Terms and Conditions.

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The Poetry in Translation Prize

Osdany Morales and Harry Bauld win the inaugural Poetry in Translation Prize.

New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and Giramondo Publishing are pleased to announce the inaugural winner of the Poetry in Translation Prize, Osdany Morales’ Security Questions, translated by Harry Bauld. The Poetry in Translation Prize is a new biennial award for an outstanding poetry collection translated into English.

The winners will receive an advance of $5,000, to be shared equally between poet and translator, followed by simultaneous publication in North America with New Directions, in the UK and Ireland with Fitzcarraldo Editions, and in Australia and New Zealand with Giramondo.

Security Questions (El pasado es un pueblo solitario; Bokeh, 2015) uses the security questions that Morales was asked on his arrival in the US as way into his experiences as an immigrant. Harry Bauld and Osdany Morales first met while working at the same school. Bauld’s curiosity was piqued by the new hire, a Spanish-speaking novelist and poet, and he found his poems online. In his words, “they spoke to me, I did a translation of one, and by way of introduction and welcome sent it to him. He paid me the compliment of saying how strange it was to ‘hear my own voice in English.’” Harry Bauld goes onto explain that, “[t]he poems from Security Questions are, on the one hand, a lyric sequence shaped by coming of age in small-town Cuba during the late stages of Fidel Castro’s regime, and on the other a testament of exile and immigration, traces that remain in the wake of forsaking a problematic homeland for the uncertainties of the present. The English ‘prompt’ titles are the security questions required to establish an on-line identity which the newly arrived Morales only half-understood and, indeed, given Morales’ characteristically unflinching irony, questions which open trenchant implications for the poet’s new ‘American’ persona.”

“Before arriving in the US, I had written only fiction. If it weren’t for this book, it would have taken me much longer to reach the lands of memory,” Morales says. “At the time, I believed that fiction wasn’t confessional, that only poets had access to that kind of meaning. It was through writing poetry that I realized I carried many memories in literary form – that exile had established a past I could already recount without waiting for old age. Exile and poetry made me look not exactly backward, but inward.”

Harry Bauld says, “Frost famously said poetry is what’s lost in translation, but in my experience, poetry is also, to borrow from William Carlos Williams, ‘what is found there.’ Always there are the contrary weights and measures of the source traditions and those of what is often called (horribly) the ‘target’ language; the translator, working toward something like equivalency, labors in those ‘between’ spaces. Our memories of reading and admiring literature published by Fitzcarraldo, Giramondo and New Directions make us doubly proud to be the inaugural translation prize to appear in their catalogue.”

Rachael Allen, the poetry editor at Fitzcarraldo Editions, says of the winning collection, “We, the judges, kept returning to these poems over the course of the reading period, and were struck continually with their newness, their humor, their prescience and their timelessness. The style of these poems feel unique and irreverent, shocking and moving. They have stuck with us from the moment we first read them, and they feel, sadly, stunningly pertinent. The poems are a necessary documentation of the context of a specific time and place, while also transcending their specifics as a reminder of the absurd semiotic brutality of all borders.”

Nick Tapper from Giramondo adds, “Osdany Morales’s brilliant, urgent Security Questions, translated by Harry Bauld with intensity and clarity, is an outstanding winner of the first Poetry in Translation Prize. The qualities of the collection – its intricate weaving of memory and experience, heightened by the absurdities of exile, and underpinned by the poems’ unmistakable, syncopated, pulsing rhythms – were evident from first reading. Its publication in English will be an important event. At Giramondo we are delighted to continue our collaboration – following on from the Novel Prize – with Fitzcarraldo Editions and New Directions, and to publish such essential international writing.”

Jeffrey Yang concludes, “New Directions is honored to be a part of the first Poetry in Translation Prize with our publishing friends Fitzcarraldo and Giramondo. Harry Bauld’s brilliant translation of Cuban writer Osdany Morales’ Security Questions speaks deeply to our embattled times while elevating our hearts and minds with humor and compassion.”

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Osdany Morales was born in Nueva Paz, Cuba, in 1981. He is the author of the short fiction works Minuciosas puertas estrechas and Antes de los aviones, the novel Papyrus and Zozobra, the nonfiction book Lengua Materna, and the poetry collection El pasado es un pueblo solitario. His work has received the 2006 David Award, a 2008 Casa de Teatro prize, and the 2012 Alejo Carpentier Award. In 2017, Dalkey Archive published the English translation of Papyrus as The Last Librarian, translated by Kristina Bonsager.

Harry Bauld’s poetry collections are The Uncorrected Eye and How to Paint a Dead Man. He was included by Matthew Dickman in Best New Poets 2012 and won the New Millennium Writings Award and the Milton Kessler Poetry Prize. He divides his time between the US and the Basque Country.

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