Announcing the winner of the 2022 Nilsen Prize

We are excited to announce the winner of the 2022 Nilsen Prize. We received a record number of submissions, and it took us a while to read so much excellent work. We are very excited to announce the results. Without further ado, then:

Congratulations to our winner, Andrew Malan Milward, for his manuscript You Are Loved, which will be published in 2024.

Andrew Malan Milward was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the author of the story collections I Was a Revolutionary and The Agriculture Hall of Fame, as well as a book of nonfiction called Jayhawker: On History, Home, and Basketball. His fiction has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and appeared in many places, including Zoetrope, American Short Fiction, VQR, and The Southern Review, as well as Best New American Voices. Milward has received fellowships and awards from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where he is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky.

We’d also like to acknowledge the fantastic manuscripts that filled out our shortlist, in alphabetical order:

Filling the Big Empty by Rhonda Browning White
In Search Of by Michele Ruby
Let the Night Be Dark by Melanie McCabe
Odessa by Jeremy Griffin
Play, With Knives by Jeanette Horn
The Registry of Forgotten Objects by Michael Harvey
Roan by Mathew Goldberg
Tear Here by Matthew Pitt
This Is What Always Happens by Maureen Traverse

Thank you again, everyone, for trusting us with your work. Submissions for the 2024 prize will open in the fall.