Riot Headline The Best Books of 2024
News

Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses: A New American Literary Award

Stacey Megally

Staff Writer

Stacey Megally is a writer, runner, and incurable bookworm. Her writing has been featured in The Dallas Morning News, Running Room Magazine, The Bookwoman, and on stage at LitNight Dallas and the Oral Fixation live storytelling show. When she isn’t knee-deep in words or marathon training, she’s hanging out with her smart, funny husband and their two extremely opinionated dogs. Instagram: @staceymegallywrites

Monday, August 30, 2021, marks the launch of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses (RofC) in the USA. With a stated mission “to support small presses for their on-going commitment to work of high literary merit,” the RofC USA website explains: “it is the small publishers who take the largest creative and financial risks and yet, in a purely financial sense, they are least able to do so.”

Founded in the UK in 2017 by novelist Neil Griffiths, the USA version of the prize will be spearheaded by Lori Feathers, book critic and co-owner of Interabang Books in Dallas, Texas. In a press release announcing the award’s launch, Feathers indicated that she’s been following the prize in the UK since its inception and feels it is “the ideal mechanism to promote and reward the work of small presses.”

“Nothing would make me happier than if the prize enabled new readers to discover and follow their favorite small presses in much the way they do their favorite authors,” she added. One of the RofC USA judges for 2022, author Ben Fountain, said of the new award: “Small presses are the unsung heroes of the literary world. It’s high time we turn the speakers up to eleven and start singing their praises.”

Like its UK counterpart, the RofC USA will, beginning in 2022, award the majority of its annual prize fund to the winning small press or presses. Throughout the year, the RofC USA will further support small presses with initiatives such as readings in bookshops, panel discussions at literary festivals, a blog on the RofC USA website, and active promotion of small presses and their books on Twitter (@USRofC).

Publishers may begin making their submissions for the 2022 prize beginning on October 21, 2021. According to the RofC USA submission criteria, a “small press” is defined as one that publishes an average of 18 or fewer titles per year, with the majority of those works being new, adult literary fiction.

The 2022 judging panel has been announced, with four out of the five members being booksellers — a practice, Feathers told me, she wants to continue each year. The judges for the first RofC USA will be:

Lori Feathers, book critic and co-owner of Interabang Books, Dallas, Texas

Headshot of Lori Feathers, 2022 judge of Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in the US

Ben Fountain, award-winning author, Dallas, Texas

Headshot of Ben Fountain, 2022 judge of Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in the USA

Michelle Malonzo, buyer at Changing Hands Bookstore, Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona

Headshot of Michell Malonzo, 2022 judge of Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in the USA

Javier Ramirez, co-owner of Exile in Bookville, Chicago, Illinois

Headshot of Javier Ramirez, 2022 judge for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in the USA

Neil Griffiths, award-winning author and founder of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, United Kingdom

Headshot of Neil Griffiths, 2022 judge for Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in the USA

Learn more about the award by visiting their website and by following them on Twitter. Dig into our archives to discover even more great small press reads.