Congrats to the Winner and finalists of the 2026 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction Contest (listed in alphabetical order)

A profile about the author and winning manuscript will be released on our website in April.

2026 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction Prize Winner

Mellitus: Essays on Up/Rooting by Jennifer Jussel

Finalists

Elegy, 1991 by J. A. Bernstein

The Rabbit Witch Spell Book by Sheri Rysdam

Three Strands: Essays on Love, Food, and Loss by Judith Sharlin

My Ghost Fleet by Faith Shearin

Thank you to all our incredible submitters. We were blown away by the quality of the submissions we received and had an incredibly difficult time narrowing down to these semifinalists and finalists. We appreciate the talent, time, and dedication that goes into putting together such works and look forward to seeing you continue to blow readers away in your future writing endeavors!

The winner of Howling Bird Press’s 2025 Fiction Prize is Annie Bruno, for her novel Until You Find Your Way. Her novel will be published by Howling Bird Press this March, and is available for preorder now from Itasca Books!

Until You Find Your Way by Annie Bruno (forthcoming March 23, 2026)

Fiction

Preorder from Itasca Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop 

In the aftermath of losing their eldest child, Beada and Porter have become an estranged couple, living on different continents. She’s in rural Minnesota raising their two other teens, while Porter visits from Bangkok “when he can,” disguising his pain as arrogance. When Beada’s only outlet—careful, unorthodox confessions to the local priest—take an abrupt turn, a quiet but seismic shift forces everyone in the family to decide what they cannot live without.

“With precise, exquisite prose, Bruno illuminates the relationship between loss and desire and how the heart can find its way when it learns to let go.” —Cassandra Garbus, author of Solo Variations and winner of the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize