About the Fiction Contest
Submissions for the Kenyon Review Fiction Contest are accepted electronically every year from December 1 through January 31 the following year.
2025 Fiction Contest Judge
Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award and a winner of the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize. His debut novel 99 Nights in Logar won John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Kochai was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but his family originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Short Stories. Kochai was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches creative writing at California State University, Sacramento.
Contest Details
The Kenyon Review publishes the winning story in print (with corresponding contributor payment), and the author is awarded a full scholarship to attend the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops.
- Submit via our Submittable portal, starting December 1. We cannot accept paper submissions.
- Writers must not have published a book of fiction at the time of submission. (We define a “published book of fiction” as a novel, novella, short story collection, or other fiction collection written by you and published by someone other than you in print, on the web, or in ebook format.)
- Submissions must be no more than 4,000 words in length.
- Please submit no more than once per year.
- Please do not simultaneously submit your contest entry to another magazine or contest.
- Please do not submit work that has been previously published.
- Before you submit, please remove your name and any other identifying information from your manuscript.
- The Submittable portal will remain active between December 1, 2025, and January 31, 2026.
- The entry fee for the Fiction Contest is just $24, collected at the time of submission. All entrants are invited to claim a complimentary half-year Print plus Digital subscription to The Kenyon Review (for domestic addresses) or a half-year Digital-only subscription (for international addresses) through. Current subscribers will receive a two-issue extension on their current subscription. As always, we will open in the fall for regular submissions, which we read at no cost to writers. You will receive information on claiming this subscription upon submitting.
Winners will be announced in the late spring. You will receive an email notifying you of any decisions regarding your work. Thanks for your interest in The Kenyon Review!
Past Winners
2025 Winners
First Prize: “Animals” by Diana Cao
Runner-up: “Gun Stories” by Jane Morton
Runner-up: “Ghost Hunting” by Jake Deluca
2024 Winners
First Prize: Easton Smith, “The Milk Incident”
Runner-up: Tamar Nachmany, “Your Girls”
Runner-up: Victoria Winter Hill, “Cousin Hayden”
2023 Winners
First Prize: Beth Bachmanne, “Siphonophore”
Runner-up: Moon Hee, “Inside Jürgen Müller’s Apartment”
Runner-up: Mary Catherine Curley, “The Hunting Vest”
2022 Winners
First Prize: M.W. Brooke, “Siphonophore”
Runner-up: Alexandra Munck, “Doe”
Runner-up: Kira K. Homsher, “Pareidolia”
Honorable Mention: Santo Randazzo, “The Order of King Neptune”
2021 Winners
First Prize: Ted Mathys, “Tallgrass”
Runner-up: Sam Zafris, “The Clothes I Kept”
Runner-up: Rachel Slotnick, “The Bat Inspector”
Runner-up: Malavika Shetty, “Newbury Street, March 2020”
2020 Winners
First Prize: Janika Oza, “Fish Stories”
Runner-up: Steffi Sin, “Dungeness”
Runner-up: Stanley Delgado, “Cactus Eater”
Honorable Mention: Jane Chong, “Brothers” and B.K. Elroy, “Choosing a Bow”
2019 Winners
First Prize: Daphne Palasi Andreades, “Brown Girls”
Runner-up: Emily Everett, “Solitária”
Runner-up: Susan Falco, “You Break It, You Own It”
2018 Winners
First Prize: Laura Roque, “Dientes for Dentures”
Runner-up: Tyler Barton, “Spiritual Introduction to the Neighborhood”
Runner-up: Christopher Fox, “Breaking”
Honorable Mention: Jena Chapman Andres, “Unter den Linden” and Alex Burchfield, “Taxidermy”
2017 Winners
First Prize: David Greendonner “Lionel, For Worse”
Runner up: Kimberly King Parsons “When Do We Worry”
Runner up: Lorain Urban “Canto”
2016 Winners
First Prize: Eve Gleichman “Butter”
Runner up: Dan Reiter “Dance of the Old Century”
Runner up: Adam Soto “The Babymoon”
Honorable Mention:
Geeta Tewari, “How I Became a Man”; Teresa Scollon, “Christmas Eve”
2015 Winners
First Prize: Shasta Grant “Most Likely To”
Runner up: Rob Howell “Mars or Elsewhere”
Runner up: Courtney Sender “Black Harness”
2014 Winners
First Prize: Amy Victoria Blakemore “Previously, Sparrows”
Runner up: Michael Capel “Florida Arizona Buffalo Hawaii”
Runner up: Frank Fucile “Slow and Steady”
Honorable Mention:
Jennifer Genest “Ways to Prepare White Perch”
Landon Houle “My Mother, Aged 58, Tattoos Her Face”
Carrie Mullins “The Last Supper”
2013 Winners
First Prize: Heather Monley “Town of Birds”
Runner up: Wes Holtermann “Hurricane”
Runner up: Clarke Clayton “Sculptures”
2012 Winners
First Prize: Cassie Gonzales “Sleeping Out”
Runner up: Andrea Dulanto “Winter Clothes”
Runner up: Madiha Sattar “Home”
2011 Winners
First Prize: Fan Li “Chiasmus”
Runner up: Anna Kovatcheva “September”
Runner up: Nichols Malick “The Boy in the Lake”
2010 Winners
First Prize: Megan Anderegg Malone “Death Threat”
Runner up: Christopher Feliciano Arnold “Salt”
Runner up: Diana Kole “Listened”
2009 Winners
First Prize: Alexandra Zobel “The Miles Tape Hypothesis”
Runner up: Jessica Lacher “A Hypothesis”
Runner up: Mika Taylor “Anchor Point”
2008 Winners
First Prize: Cara Blue Adams “I Met Loss the Other Day”
Second Prize: Megan Mayhew Bergman “Afterbirth”
Third Prize: Nick Ripatrazone “The Bearberry Elegies”