The 2026 Wisconsin Fiction Book Award
The Wisconsin Fiction Book Award is given to the best fiction book published by a Wisconsin writer in the contest year. Submissions are open from August 1, 2026 to January 8, 2027. See full contest guidelines for more details.
- First Place: $1000 award and five-day stay at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, WI ($895 value)
- Honorable Mention: $100 and a five-day stay at Ernest Hüpeden's Painted Forest in Valton, WI ($800 value)
Judge: Amanda Rizkalla
Amanda Rizkalla is the author of Hungered. A recent Steinbeck Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow, she has been a writer-in-residence at Ragdale, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi, among others. After graduating from Stanford University, she received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a Kemper Knapp Fellow.
Previous Winners:
2025
First Place: Gichigami (University of Massachussetts Press) by Lindsey Steffes (Dellwood, MN)
Honorable Mention: Life, and Death, and Giants (St. Martins Press) by Ron Rindo (Pickett, WI)
2024
First Place: Gee, That Was Fun: 7 Days of Mayhem, 1983 (Trunk of My Car) by Robert Fromberg (Madison)
Honorable Mention: Wayward Home (Luxvida Press) by Charity Eleson (Madison)
2023
First Place: Killingly (Soho Press) by Katharine Beutner (Wauwatosa)
Honorable Mention: The Light Is Ours (Sand Beach Press) by Ann Heyse (Baileys Harbor)
2022
First Place: The Net Beneath Us (Forge Books) by Carol Dunbar (Superior)
Honorable Mention: Still True (University of Wisconsin Press) by Maggie Ginsberg (Blue Mounds)
2021
First Place: Anthony Bukoski, The Blondes of Wisconsin: Stories
Honorable Mention: Shannon Schuren, Where Echoes Lie
Winners from 1965 to 1999
Return to the Wisconsin Writers Awards main page