June 15 - August 15, 2024
Judge: TBD
In honor of Henry Dumas’ legacy, we seek to award innovative fiction that “inhabits the geography” of its place in rare ways. Any fiction writer working in English is eligible to submit, so long as they have not yet published a first book. U.S. citizenship is not a restriction of eligibility. The winner receives $1000 and publication in the Arkansas International. The inaugural judge of the Henry Dumas Fiction Prize was Ladee Hubbard.
Submissions open annually at the start of June and close at the end of August. Please follow our social media channels for announcements and visit Submittable for details. We are grateful to Eugene B. Redmond and the Henry L. Dumas Foundation for their support of our work.
Entries for the Henry Dumas in Fiction should be a single prose work not exceeding 7,500 words. Entrants may submit more than once, but each new entry must be accompanied by a separate $20 entry fee.
Contest Guidelines:
Open to writers who haven’t yet published a full-length book, and who have no book forthcoming before May 1, 2025. Writers with chapbooks are allowed. Writers with a self-published book with a print run under 500 copies are allowed.
All work will be considered for inclusion in the print magazine.
Only previously unpublished work will be considered.
The contest will be judged blindly, so please DO NOT include your cover letter, your name, or any contact information in your uploaded document.
Submit your double-spaced work as a single .doc, .docx, or .pdf file.
Close friends of the judge, as well as anyone recently affiliated with the University of Arkansas, which includes those who have studied or worked there within the past 4 years, are ineligible.
$20 entry fee includes an issue of The Arkansas International (free to current subscribers).
Karen Walker, 2022 Judge
Karen Thompson Walker is a New York Times bestselling author of two novels, The Dreamers, which was a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and The Age of Miracles, which was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, an Indies Choice Award, and a Goodreads Choice Award and named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, People, O., The Oprah Magazine, and Amazon. Her work has been translated into 27 languages. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon, and she lives with her husband and two daughters in Portland, Oregon.
