Winner
The 2024 winner of the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence is Maureen Stanton. Her memoir, The Murmur Of Everything Moving will be published March 15, 2205 by CSU Press. Maureen Stanton is the author of Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood, winner of the Maine Literary Award for memoir and a People Magazine "Best Books Pick"; and Killer Stuff and Tons of Money: An Insider’s Look at the World of Flea Markets, Antiques, and Collecting, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in nonfiction and a Parade Magazine "12 Great Summer Books" selection. Her essays have received the Iowa Review prize, The Sewanee Review prize, Pushcart Prizes, the American Literary Review award, and the Thomas J. Hruska award from Passages North. She‘s been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maine Arts Commission, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Finalists
It is with great enthusiasm that CSU Press announces our 2024 five finalists for the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence. The prize carries a $10,000 award and a contract for publication. Listed in alphabetical order by last name, with no indication of ranking, the finalists are:
- Jon Michael Blair, for his novel, The Heart and Its Flames
- Kevin P. Honold, for his essay collection, The Ghostly Vision
- Dwaine Rieves, for his memor, Cold In Mississippi
- Lauren Slaughter, for her story collection, Vulnerable Targets
- Maureen Stanton for her memoir, The Murmur of Everything Moving
This year‘s judge is novelist and short story writer, Debra Jo Immergut. She is the author of the novels You Again, The Captives, and the short story collection, Private Property.
Note: The current Jordan Prize competition is open from May 1, 2024 to Sept. 30th, 2024.
Previous Winners
Michelle Herman was the winner of the 2020 Prize for her novel Close-Up.
Michelle Herman is the author of three previous novels - Missing, Dog, and Devotion - and the novella collection A New and Glorious Life, as well as three essay collections - The Middle of Everything, Stories We Tell Ourselves (longlisted for the 2014 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay), and Like A Song (winner of the 2016 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award) - as well as a book for children, A Girl's Guide to Life. She has taught creative writing since 1988 at Ohio State, where she also directs a graduate interdisciplinary program in the arts and an all-scholarship summer writing program for teenagers in Columbus, Ohio.
Janisse Ray was the winner of the 2021 Prize for the essay collection, Just Visiting This Planet.
Janisse Ray is an American Writer whose subject most often falls into the borderland of nature and culture. She has published five books of nonfiction and a collection of eco-poetry. Ray has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Bookseller Awards, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Awards, and Eisenberg Award, among others. Her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, was a New York Times Notable Book. She has been inducted into the GA Writers Hall of Fame and lives on an organic farm near Savannah. Red Lanterns, Ray's second book of poetry, is forthcoming in Spring, 2021.
Scott Nadelson was the winner of the 2022 Prize for his short story collection, While It Lasts.
Scott grew up in northern New Jersey before escaping to Oregon, where he has lived for the past twenty-four years. He has published four collections of short stories, The Fourth Corner of the World, named a Jewish Fiction Prize Honor Book by the Association of Jewish Libraries; Aftermath; The Cantor’s Daughter; and Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories; and a memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress. His novel Between You and Me was published by Engine Books in 2015, and his story collection, One of Us, was published by BkMk Press in October, 2020.
Ellen Birkett Morris was the winner of the 2023 Prize for her novel, Beware the Tall Grass.
Ellen is the author of Lost Girls: Short Stories, winner of the Pencraft Award and finalist for the Clara Johnson, IAN and Best Book awards. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. She is a winner of the Bevel Summers Prize for short fiction. Morris is a recipient of an Al Smith Fellowship for her fiction from the Kentucky Arts Council. She is also the author of Abide and Surrender, poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Gastronomica, and Inscape, among other journals, and in eight anthologies. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio.
Donald L. Jordan founded a construction, real estate development and investment firm in his late teens. He began writing at age fourteen and has published non-fiction, short stories, and novels. In 1992, Mr. Jordan received the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Forest Stewardship Award which states that his practices, "leave the world a better place than you found for those who will follow."
The Editor of DLJ Books is Allen Gee, Professor of Creative Writing at Columbus State University. He is also the Editor for the multicultural imprint 2040 Books, and has been the Editor of Gulf Coast, and served for over a decade as the Fiction Editor for Arts & Letters. His website can be found at allengee.com
The Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence
Entry Deadline: September 30th, 2024
The prize is $10,000
One entry per $25.00
Authors retain all rights to their work when submitting
The winner will be offered a book contract for full-market, front list release.
The designated winner has to sign a book contract with DLJ Books, and then, only if a contract agreement is reached, will the prize money be awarded. If a contract cannot be signed, the prize and cash award shall be awarded to another writer. The contest is open to international submissions.
- Entries may include a brief synopsis, or introductory letter. Do not send personal correspondence to the Judge or the Editor.
- Employees of Columbus State University and people who have studied or worked with the Judge or Editor are not eligible to compete for the prize.
- Participation in other contests and programs and pursuing publication is allowed while the prize competition is open. We do ask that you notify us (email address needed) and withdraw your entry if you sign a publishing contract elsewhere.
- Previously published material is eligible, meaning writing (stories or excerpts) published in magazines, literary journals, and by micro presses. Self-published books are eligible. If you have already published with a small press or a NY press, your book is not eligible.
- If a winner is not chosen by the final judge, entrants will be permitted to submit another manuscript at no cost for the contest's following year.
The judge for the 2024 prize is Debra Jo Immergut.
She is the author of the novels You Again, named a New York Times Best of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Gotham Book Prize, and The Captives, a 2019 Edgar Award finalist and published in over a dozen countries. She has also published a collection of short fiction, Private Property. Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, The New York Times, PANK, Hobart, and elsewhere. A recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships, she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in western Massachusetts.
We seek unpublished literary fiction, short story collections or novels, memoirs, or essay collections. We are interested in well-crafted books, and we like American or global stories, whether the focus is on working, middle or upper class lives; we are interested in seeing the human condition illuminated in rural landscapes, suburbia, or the city. We also like books that focus on any race, or gender, books that let readers know about struggle and perseverance, but we aren't inclined to favor vulgarity written simply to shock. We are not a publisher of "inspirational" writing, but we are extremely interested in manuscripts that engage a reader with upholding human values, such as trust, generosity, love, gratitude, or responsibility. We are not inclined to publish horror, science fiction, romance, fantasy, or young adult or children's books.
Entry Information
To submit your book to the The Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence contest, please submit your entry fee using the link below. You will receive a link to submit your entry on the confirmation email. Please note that you will need to provide your order confirmation number from your receipt email in order to submit your book entry.
The Jordan Prize competition is open from May 1, 2024 to September 30, 2024.
When you receive your confirmation email, you will need to use the link listed as the "Order" on the email.
Please email gee_allen@columbusstate.edu if you encounter any difficulties with this process.