James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel

James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel: $5,500 and publication by the University of Nebraska Press

2026 Judge

Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, which won the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, as well as the California Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, he’s also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. His first novel, We the Animals, was a national bestseller and was adapted into a feature film. He lives in Los Angeles and is an associate professor of English at UCLA.

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2025 Winner

Winner: Chital Mehta
Have You Seen Romit?

Chital Mehta was born and raised in India, where she experimented with writing YA novels. Her short stories have appeared in The Pinch, Oyez Review, SLAB magazine, and elsewhere. Her story “Damaged Gifts” won the SLAB fiction contest in 2022. Her work was a finalist for the 2022 Pinch Literary Award. Her stories center around displacement and belonging. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University. She lives in Delaware with her husband and children, where she is working on her next novel and a collection of short stories based on Asian immigrant themes. She can be reached at ChitalMehtaJey.com.

R. O. Kwon, judge: “Have You Seen Romit? is a gripping, intensely moving portrayal of a woman whose ferocious love for her children ends up clashing with how others expect her to behave. I loved spending time with the rule-breaking Usha and with the complicated world Chital Mehta has conjured. Vivid, fresh, and resonant.”

Runner-up: Natalie Rogers
FATTY

2025 Finalists

THE BEDEVILMENTS by Greg Ames
JACKSON: A NOVEL by George Bishop
THIS IS ABOUT AN ALLIGATOR AND NOTHING ELSE by Anna Dempsey
LOOKING AND BEING by Anne Elliott
SNAKEBITES AND CELEBRATIONS by J. Hoolihan Clayton
TUPELOS by Tom Irwin
YEAH, BUT I’M OKAY THOUGH by Galen Schram
BERMUDA BLUE by Emily Wharton Schmalz

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The James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel

Winner: Benjamin Grossberg
The Spring Before Obergefell, University of Nebraska Press

Benjamin Grossberg is the author of four full-length books of poetry, including My Husband Would (University of Tampa, 2020), winner of the 2021 Connecticut Book Award in poetry and a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year; Space Traveler (University of Tampa, 2014); and Sweet Core Orchard (University of Tampa, 2009), winner of the Tampa Review Prize and a 2009 Lambda Literary Award. He also coedited the anthology The Poetry of Capital (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), which curates work that addresses the economic challenges of our moment. Ben is a professor and director of creative writing at the University of Hartford.

Percival Everett, Judge: “The world of this novel is patiently rendered with language that is direct, unadorned, and yet full. The characters here are presented with the kind of affection that is rare in much current literature. This is a love story and a growth story and a story about how the world changes and affects our self-definition, confidence, and place within it. The relationships are not familiar but not cliche, surprising but not sensational. I love the honesty and openness of this novel.”

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