The 2025 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award
The Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award was given to the best fiction book published by a Wisconsin writer in the contest year. Submissions from October 1, 2025 to January 15, 2026. See full contest guidelines for more details (this competition is now closed).
- 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: Gabriela Garcia
Winner: Gichigami by Lindsey Steffes
Honorable Mention: Life, Death, & Giants by Ron Rindo
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:
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