Genre: Not Genre-Specific

The Feminist Press has partnered with TAYO Literary Magazine to launch the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize, which will be given for debut books of fiction or nonfiction by women and nonbinary writers of color. The winner will receive $5,000 and a publishing contract with the Feminist Press.

Novels, short story collections, and works of narrative nonfiction are eligible. Women and nonbinary writers of color (or those who self-identify as nonwhite) may submit a complete manuscript of 50,000 to 80,000 words along with a cover letter that includes the following: an author statement, a brief bio, how the book fits with the work and mission of TAYO and the Feminist Press, a list of up to three influential writers, and the manuscript’s word count. The deadline is July 31. Complete guidelines here.

Entries will be read by a group of judges made up of staff, board members, and allies of the Feminist Press and TAYO Literary Magazine. The top five manuscripts will then be sent to final judges Tayari Jones and Ana Castillo, who will select the winning manuscript. The winner will be announced in February 2017.

The new prize was founded in honor of novelist, essayist, journalist, and activist Louise Meriwether, age 93, who published her first novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner, in 1970. The book, about the life of a poor black family in the post–Harlem Renaissance era, was one of the first contemporary American novels to feature a young African American girl as the protagonist, and went on to inspire the careers of authors such Jacqueline Woodson and Bridgett M. Davis.

TAYO—a which means “us” or “stand up” in Tagalog—is a magazine dedicated to publishing works of poetry and prose that “slice into the phantasmagoria of the oppressed, marginalized, post-colonized, and diasporic life.”The Feminist Press, founded in 1970 at the City University of New York, is a nonprofit press established to “advance women’s rights and amplify feminist perspectives,” and champion “silenced and marginalized voices in order to support personal transformation and social justice for all people.

Photo: Bridgett M. Davis and Louise Meriwether in 2014. Credit: Muneesh Jain