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Results of the 2021 Editors’ Chapbook Prize for Fiction


OCTOBER 5, 2021    |    CONTEST RESULTS





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The editors of Southern Humanities Review are proud to announce the results of our first annual fiction chapbook contest. This year’s final judge—author Ron Austin—selected our winner. The winner will receive a $1,000 prize and a print run of 100 copies of a chapbook containing their award-winning novella and/or short stories.

About the winning manuscript, Ron Austin says “States of Emergency renders the complexity of gender identity, sexuality, and navigating relationships with urgency, joy, and power.”


Heather McNaugher

for her chapbook States of Emergency

Heather McNaugher teaches literature and writing at her alma mater, Chatham University, where she is also the nonfiction editor of the Fourth River. She is the author of Second-order Desire and System of Hideouts and two poetry chapbooks, Panic & Joy and Double Life. Her recent scholarly work features a paper and keynote presentation to the Barbara Pym Society, of which she is a proud member. She’s lived in Seattle and Brooklyn and received her Ph.D. in English from The State University of New York at Binghamton. A nostalgic librarian, she once worked for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where you will find her on a near daily basis wandering among the novels.

OUR WINNER RECEIVES $1,000 AS WELL AS A PRINT RUN OF 100 COPIES OF AN IN-HOUSE DESIGNED CHAPBOOK.



Jon van Kirk   Funeral
Sandhya Thakrar   Not One of Those People
JoAnna Acevedo   I Love You Like a Brother
Tim Weed   Among the Monoliths