The 2023 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award
Deadline: Postmarked by January 31, 2024
Entry fee: $30 (or $20 for members of Arts + Literature Laboratory)*
The Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award is given to the best fiction book published by a Wisconsin writer in the contest year. See full contest guidelines.
- 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: Alison Stine
Alison Stine is the author of the novel Trashlands (HarperCollins) and Road Out of Winter (HarperCollins). She is also the author of three poetry collections and a novella. Alison’s plays and original musicals have been produced at community and regional theaters, and Off-Broadway. Recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Alison was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a Ruth Lilly Fellow, and received the Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism. In 2022, she was voted Top Author by 5280 magazine. She is partially deaf.
*If the entry fee poses a financial hardship, please reach out to ritamae@artlitlab.org for assistance.
About the award's namesake:
Edna Ferber (1888-1968), world famous in her day, was the author of 12 novels, nine plays (some in collaboration with other playwrights), 12 short story collections, and two autobiographies. Her novels included So Big (Pulitzer Prize winner in 1925), Show Boat (made into a musical in 1927), Cimarron (made into the 1931 Academy Award-winning movie), and Giant (made into the 1956 movie). When she was 12, her family moved to Appleton. She briefly attended Lawrence College and worked for the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before writing her first novel. She was also a member of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table. Possessed with a strong sense of her Jewish identity, Ferber was a lifelong fighter against anti-Semitism.
Previous Winners:
2022
First Place: The Net Beneath Us (Forge Books) by Carol Dunbar, Superior, WI
Carol Dunbar is a working writer and former actor, playwright, and coloratura soprano who left her life in the city to live off the grid. She is author of two novels, The Net Beneath Us, winner of the 2022 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, and A Winter’s Rime, releasing in the fall of 2023. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, The South Carolina Review, and on Wisconsin Public Radio. She writes from a solar-powered office on the second floor of a water tower in northern Wisconsin, where she lives in a house in the woods with her husband, two kids, and a giant Alaskan malamute.
Honorable Mention: Still True (University of Wisconsin Press) by Maggie Ginsberg, Blue Mounds, WI
Maggie Ginsberg is a senior editor at Madison Magazine and a long-time contributor to regional and national publications. Her nonfiction work has been honored by the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National City and Regional Magazine Association, and the Milwaukee Press Club. She turned to fiction for the first time with her debut literary novel, Still True, which was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in September 2022. Maggie was born in Minnesota and has lived in Wisconsin since 1985, and Still True is set in a rural fictional community much like the small towns in which she's always lived. Find more of her work on her website, maggieginsberg.com, as well as Instagram (@maggie.ginsberg), Twitter (@maggieginsberg) and Facebook (Maggie Ginsberg, Author).
2021
Anthony Bukoski, The Blondes of Wisconsin: Stories
Honorable Mention: Shannon Schuren, Where Echoes Lie
2020
No award
2019
Thomas Davis (Sturgeon Bay), In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams (All Things That Matter Press)
Honorable Mention: Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden (Madison), The Dead of Achill Island (University of Wisconsin Press)
2018
Liam Callanan(Milwaukee), Paris by the Book (Dutton)
Honorable Mention: Tom Matthews (Wauwatosa), Raising the Dad (St. Martin’s Press)
2017
Matt Cashion (La Crosse), Our 13th Divorce (Livingston Press)
Honorable Mention: Kathleen Ernst (Middleton), Mining for Justice (Midnight Ink)
2016
Patricia Skalka (Sturgeon Bay), Death in Cold Water (University of Wisconsin Press)
Honorable Mention: Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden (Madison), Death on a Starry Night (University of Wisconsin Press)
2015
Judith Claire Mitchell (Madison), A Reunion of Ghosts (Harper Collins)
2014
Chloe Krug Benjamin (Madison), The Anatomy of Dreams (Atria/Simon & Schuster)
2013
Jesse Lee Kercheval (Madison), My Life as a Silent Movie (Indiana University Press)
Honorable Mention: Raymond D. Schrab, Hartford, Dutch Schultz and the Gold of Quilali (Create Space)
2012
Shauna Singh Baldwin (Milwaukee), The Selector of Souls (Random House of Canada)
Honorable Mention: Paul Salsini, Milwaukee, The Temptation of Father Lorenzo (iUniverse)
2011
Kathleen Ernst (Middleton), The Heirloom Murders (Midnight Ink)
Honorable Mention: Douglas W. Jacobson (Elm Grove), The Katyn Order: A Novel (McBooks, Inc.)
2010
Douglas Armstrong (Whitefish Bay), Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows (iUniverse)
Honorable Mention: Angela Woodward (Madison), End of the Fire Cult (Ravenna Press)
2009
Valerie Laken (Milwaukee), Dream House (Harper)
Honorable Mention: Dwight Allen (Madison), The Typewriter Satyr (University of Wisconsin Press)
2008
Anthony Bukoski (Superior), North of the Port (Southern Methodist University Press)
Honorable Mention: Rae Meadows (Madison), No One Tells Everything (MacAdam/Cage)
Honorable Mention: David McGlynn (Appleton), The End of the Straight and Narrow (Southern Methodist University Press)
2007
Benjamin Percy (Stevens Point), Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf Press)
2006
Paul Salsini (Milwaukee), The Cielo: a Novel of Wartime Tuscany (iUniverse)
Honorable Mention: Margaret George (Madison), Helen of Troy (Viking Press)
2005 (tie)
Dean Bakopoulos (Madison), Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon (Harcourt) and
C. J. Hribal (Milwaukee), The Company Car (Random House)
2004
Rebecca Meacham (Oneida), Let’s Do (University of North Texas Press)
Honorable Mention: Judith Claire Mitchell (Madison), The Last Day of the War (Pantheon)
Honorable Mention: Tenaya Darlington (Madison), Maybe Baby (Back Bay Books)
Honorable Mention: Gordon Weaver (Cedarburg), Last Stands (University of Missouri Press)
2003
Anthony Bukoski (Superior), Time Between Trains (SMU Press)
2002
No award
2001
Richard Horan, Goose Music (Steerforth Press)
2000
Elizabeth Oness (La Crosse), Articles of Faith (University of Iowa Press)
1999
Anthony Bukoski (Superior), Polonaise
1998
Lorrie Moore (Madison), Birds of America
1997
Gordon Weaver, Four Decades: New & Selected Stories
1996
Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Deep End of the Ocean
1995
Kyoko Mori, One Bird
1994
Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
1993
Kyoko Mori, Shizuoko’s Daughter
1992
No award
1991
Mark Rich, Lifting
1990
Kelly Cherry, My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers
1989
Martha Bergland, A Farm Under a Lake
1988
Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth
1987
Ellen Hunnicutt, Suite for Calliope
1986
Margaret George, The Autobiography of Henry VIII
1985
Patricia Hodgell, Dark of the Moon
1984
No award
1983
No award
1982
Gene DeWeese, A Different Darkness
1981
Barbara Vroman, Sons of Thunder
1980
Michael Mooney, Squid Soup
1979
Kelly Cherry, Augusta Played
1978
No award
1977
Peggy Dopp and Barbara Vroman, Tomorrow Is a River
1976
Gene DeWeese, Jeremy Case
1975
Herbert Kubly, The Duchess of Glover
1974
Tony Hozeny, Driving Wheel/My House Is Dark
1973
James Olson, Ulzana
1972
Warren Fine, Their Family
1971
Paul Covert, Cages
1970
No award
1969 (tie)
Mel Ellis, Wild Goose, Brother Goose
Dion Henderson, On the Mountain
1968
Waldon Porterfield, The Hot Country
1967
Donald Emerson, Court Decision
1966
No award
1965
Beverly Butler, Feather in the Wind
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