Now in Fourth Year, Award Honors Innovative Short Fiction or Nonfiction
Chautauqua Institution today announced that it is accepting submissions for the Chautauqua Janus Prize, now in its fourth year. This unique literary prize celebrates an emerging writer’s single work of short fiction or nonfiction for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations. In addition to receiving a $5,000 award, the winner will give a reading during the 2021 summer season as part of the Institution’s CHQ Assembly online platform and appear in a forthcoming issue of the literary journal Chautauqua. The prize is funded by a generous donation from Chautauquans Barbara and Twig Branch.
Named for Janus, the Roman god who looks to both the past and the future, the prize will honor writing with a command of craft that renovates understandings of both. The 2021 winner will be selected by guest judge Rion Amilcar Scott, who will also lead a prose workshop during the 2022 summer season with the Chautauqua Writers’ Center. Scott is the author of the story collection, The World Doesn't Require You (Norton/Liveright, 2019). His debut story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Scott’s work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 and Crab Orchard Review, among others. He previously taught at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center in 2019, leading a workshop and craft talk on world-building.