SANDRA CARPENTER PRIZE FOR CREATIVE NONFICTION
This special honor is awarded to an American writer for creative nonfiction identifying as female. Writers can be currently living abroad.
The prize includes a $750 cash award, a developmental mentorship, and an agent consultation.
HOW TO ENTER
By entering the FIRST PAGES PRIZE qualifying entries are automatically considered for the Sandra Carpenter Prize. A separate jury will determine the winner.
2024 SANDRA CARPENTER PRIZE WINNER
Minor Rebel examines the blurred lines between good girl and rebel, silence and expression, ambition and disappointment. Traced through the quiet rebellions of an immigrant daughter, this coming-of-age memoir seeks to recast rebellion as a worthy tool of self-examination, signaling not impulsive defiances but expressions of our truest desires.
“A voice beckons to me from our little room, where my mother perhaps waves her hand, trying to get me to come back to naptime. I shake my head, or I stare at her, and I stay by my sunshine and my rumbling wall. My resistance is simply an act of communication, simply my body saying, I want to stay.”
Bio: Jiadai Lin was born in Beijing and grew up in Wisconsin and New York. In 2015, she left her corporate law job in Manhattan to pursue a writer's life in New Mexico, where she lives now. Her work has been published in Brevity, december, Pigeon Pages, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
2023 SANDRA CARPENTER PRIZE WINNER
CLEOFAS - CANDACE EROS DIAZ
Bio: Candace Eros Diaz (she/they) is a queer Xicana novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is currently based in Lisjan Ohlone territory also known as Oakland, California. Find her on Twitter @CandaceErosDiaz
2022 SANDRA CARPENTER PRIZE WINNER
THE TIGER’S PAW PRINT: A MEMOIR OF MYTH AND DESIRE IN THE HIMALAYAS — CALLA JACOBSON
Bio: Calla Jacobson spent a semester in Nepal in 1984, an experience that led to many years of volunteering, working, living, listening, and researching—the latter supported by a Fulbright grant. She has a PhD in anthropology and an MFA in creative nonfiction. She lives in Colorado, where she grew up.
2021 SANDRA CARPENTER PRIZE WINNER
“Ready About” Allison Ellis
Bio: Allison Ellis is a Seattle-based writer whose essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Ploughshares Blog, Amazon Original Stories, SELF, and The Washington Post. She recently earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington Writing Seminars.
2020 SANDRA CARPENTER PRIZE WINNER
“Grafted Mandarin” Allison Hong Merrill
Bio: Allison Hong Merrill is a Taiwanese immigrant and an award-winning author who shares her Chinese culture with strong storytelling skills to create empowering memoirs.