Fourth Genre Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize

In honor of Fourth Genre’s founding editor, Michael J. Steinberg, we’re proud to award $1000 and publication each year to the winner of the Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize.

Our Judge this year is Debra Gwartney. Debra is the author of two book-length memoirs, Live Through This, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and I Am a Stranger Here Myself, winner of the RiverTeeth Nonfiction Prize and the Willa Award for Nonfiction. Debra has published in such journals as Granta, The Sun, Tin House, American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, Freemans, and others. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, and her essay, “Fire and Ice,” was recently selected for Best American Essays, by Alexander Chee. Debra is co-editor, along with her husband Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. She lives in Western Oregon.

• Submit from January 1st to March 15th.
• All submissions will be considered for publication.
  
• We rarely publish essays longer than 6,000 words. But if you have something longer, and it is really good, send it our way.
• A Reading fee of $20(U.S.) for each individual submission (multiple submissions accepted).
• For all reading periods, we read blind, so be sure your name or any other identifying information does not appear on the manuscript or in the file name.