The James Baker Hall Foundation is pleased to continue our partnership with Accents Publishing for the James Baker Hall Book Award. In 2025, the award will recognize an unpublished collection of short stories by a Kentucky author. We define Kentucky author as someone who lives in Kentucky, has lived in Kentucky, has strong ties to Kentucky or whose work features a prominent Kentucky theme. The author of the winning manuscript will receive a $3000 award and the manuscript will be published the following year by Accent Publishing, with the standard Accents Publishing contract. Following publication, the Winner may join the James Baker Hall Kentucky On-The-Road tour to promote their work across the Commonwealth and help nurture the next generation of Kentucky writers.

“We are very excited to announce the opening of submissions for this 2025 Book Award for short fiction,” commented Lawrence Pemble, Managing Director of the Foundation. “We are working with Accents Publishing now to launch last year’s Book Award winner for poetry and kick-off our Kentucky On-The-Road speaking tour later this Spring. The OTR tour offers the author an opportunity to promote their work state-wide over the course of many months. The events we arrange with local partners include other well known local authors and young, emerging writers as well. We believe the annual James Baker Hall Book Award, OTR tour and our mentoring programs with local partners around the state help to ensure future generations will continue our legacy of excellence in Kentucky Letters.”

The winner of the inaugural 2024 James Baker Hall Award was Wesley Houp for his poetry book, Strung Out Along the Endless Branch which was selected by judge Greg Pape. The book premiere gala is scheduled for May 22nd at 6 pm at the Lyric Theater, Lexington. Information and tickets can be found here.

2025 James Baker Hall Book Award – Collected Short Stories – Call for Manuscripts

Award: $3000 plus publication with the standard Accents Publishing contract

Eligibility: Writers 18 or older. Current students of the judge, as well as personal friends and family may not submit.

Manuscript preparation: The submitted manuscript must be anonymous. The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the text.

Deadline: Manuscripts can be submitted between April 1st and June 30th. Winner and finalists will be announced in the Fall.

Submission: Only electronic submissions will be considered. Email your anonymous manuscript to accents.publishing@gmail.com. Include a brief bio in the body of the email.

Judging: Acclaimed author Toni Ann Johnson will be the final judge.

Fees: None. There is no submission fee.

Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for her linked story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste (UGA Press, 2022), which was selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. The book was nominated for a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and shortlisted for the 2024 Saroyan Prize. A novella, Homegoing, won Accents Publishing’s inaugural novella contest in 2020 and was released by the press in 2021. Johnson’s first novel, Remedy for a Broken Angel (2014), was nominated for a 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Johnson’s short fiction has appeared in the Coachella Review, Hunger Mountain, Callaloo Journal, Fiction Magazine, and many other publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and she’s been a Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab fellow, a Kimbilio fellow, a Hurston/Wright fellow, and a Callaloo Writing Workshop fellow. She’s received additional support for her writing from the One-Story Summer Conference, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 2024, she was selected by Crystal Wilkinson as one of the inaugural winners of the Screen Door Press Prize for her linked story collection But Where’s Home? The collection is forthcoming from the new imprint of the University Press of Kentucky in February of 2026.

For more information about the James Baker Hall Book Award, please contact Foundation Executive Vice President, Jeanine Triplett at jeanine@jamesbakerhall.org or call (502) 693-3206.