Housatonic Book Awards $1,000 honorarium

Western Connecticut State University’s MFA in Creative and Professional Writing has opened submissions for the 2026 Housatonic Book Awards, a set of annual prizes for books published in 2025. The program’s awards page says the prizes cover fiction, nonfiction, poetry and YA/Middle-Grade, while NewPages’ listing highlighted fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Organizers said each winner receives a $1,000 honorarium, a $500 travel stipend and a hotel stay in exchange for appearing at a winter or summer residency to give a public reading and a master class. The opening was promoted on May 21 through literary-submissions channels including NewPages. ### Which books are eligible this year? The Western Connecticut State University awards page says the 2026 cycle is for book-length works published in 2025. The categories named on that page are fiction, nonfiction, poetry and YA/Middle-Grade. NewPages’ contest listing said authors can “submit books published in 2025” and described the award as open to fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Poets & Writers, in a separate contest database entry, described the Housatonic Book Awards as annual prizes for books published in the previous year. ### What do the winners receive? NewPages said the award carries a $1,000 honorarium and a $500 travel stipend. The listing added that winners are expected to appear at a winter or summer residency, give a public reading and lead a master class with MFA students. Poets & Writers said the awards also include a hotel stay. A TikTok post from the WCSU MFA account promoting last year’s cycle described the combined package as $1,500, which aligns with the honorarium and travel stipend listed elsewhere. ### Who runs the awards? Western Connecticut State University said its MFA in Creative and Professional Writing presents the awards with the MFA Alumni Writers Collaborative. The awards page identifies the program as the organizer of the 2026 cycle. The older WordPress submission page for the Housatonic Book Awards shows the awards have been run through a separate site and submission portal in prior cycles. That page, archived from the previous year’s competition, listed MFA Assistant S. Salazar as a contact for questions. ### Where do entrants apply, and what does it cost? The RegFox submission portal for the 2026 Housatonic Book Awards lists separate entry sections for nonfiction and other categories and says entrants should submit an electronic PDF of the book. The portal lists June 15, 2026 as the deadline. Poets & Writers’ current database entry lists a $25 entry fee, though that entry appears to reflect the prior awards cycle for books published in 2024. NewPages’ roundup posts for the 2025 cycle also cited a $25 fee plus processing. I could not independently verify from an official 2026 awards page, available in search results, whether the fee has changed for the current cycle. ### Why do some listings describe different categories? The WCSU awards page includes YA/Middle-Grade alongside fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The NewPages listing and the social post cited in the initial announcement refer only to fiction, nonfiction and poetry. That difference appears to reflect how various outlets summarized the call rather than a dispute over whether the awards are open. The official WCSU page is the broadest category listing available in current search results. ### What happens next? The RegFox portal says submissions for the 2026 Housatonic Book Awards close on June 15, 2026. NewPages directed entrants to the Housatonic Book Awards website for guidelines and past winners, and WCSU’s MFA program is the named organizer for the current cycle.