Eludia Award

                                  Lilla Cabot Perry, Lady With a Bowl of Violets, 1910

THE NEXT SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR THE ELUDIA AWARD IS MARCH 15, 2023

The Eludia Award is offered annually for a first book-length unpublished novel or collection of stories. The prize is open to women writers age 40 and older, who do not yet have a book-length publication of fiction. (Book length publications in other genres are fine. Self-publishing IS publishing, and will disqualify the fiction manuscript.) The winning manuscript will be published on our imprint, Sowilo Press, and will receive a $1000 award, plus a standard publication contract with Hidden River Publishing.

The next round of manuscript submissions opens on August 15, 2022 and closes on March 15, 2023.  

Winning Manuscript Receives $1,000 and publication. 

Entry fee: $20 US.

This competition is open to international submissions for all writers in English, and we encourage submissions from our international community of women writers.

All submissions must include name, address, telephone number, email, website (if you have one), a biography (including birthday) and resume, outline, full synopsis and full manuscript. (If submitting a collection of short stories, the “synopsis” can be a brief overview of the stories – their themes, setting, characters, etc.) Online submissions are required. Please note that, when submitting online, all materials must be combined into ONE document before uploading. Be sure to upload all required materials, including the synopsis BEFORE the manuscript, which should be uploaded last. To submit online please go to Submittable. and submit to the category “Eludia Award”.

Both multiple submissions and simultaneous submissions are fine. Each manuscript entry must be submitted separately. For simultaneous submissions,  we ask only that you contact us asap if you place the manuscript elsewhere.

PLEASE NOTE: If online submission is a true hardship for anyone interested in submitting to The Eludia Award, please do not hesitate to contact us at hiddenriverarts@gmail.com to discuss an alternative possibility. It’s not our intention to exclude anyone, but rather to simplify the reading of manuscripts. Online submissions make group evaluation more easily possible, and it makes everything more affordable.

Recent winners of The Eludia Award:

Hidden River Arts is pleased to announce Carol Roh Spaulding of Granger, Iowa, as the 2021 winner of the Eludia Aware for her novel, Helen Button. Her novel will be published on our Sowilo Press imprint in late 2022/early 2023.

The 2020 winner of our Eludia Award is Ronit Plank of Seattle, Washington, for her short story collection, Home is a Made-Up Place.  The collection will be published on our Sowilo Press imprint in 2022.

After delays caused by the COVID shut downs, we were pleased to launch publication of our previous winner, Justine Dymond, for The Emigrant and Other Stories.  The next Eludia winner, who is about to launch in early 2022, is Elise Atchinson, for Crazy Mountain.  Please follow us to receive notification of our updates.

Be sure to subscribe to this blog for all announcements. Also, and this is important, unless your manuscript on Submittable is reported as “declined”, it is still in consideration.

All awards are decided by Hidden River staff, and decisions are final. We reserve the right to decline to to name a winner in any given year, should no deserving manuscripts be received.  To date, the opposite has been true; we have found that this demographic is filled with very talented writers deserving of publication and regret that we have to choose one winner from among such wonderful works.

Note: All submissions will be considered for regular publication by Sowilo Press in addition to consideration for The Eludia Award.

Please be sure to BOOKMARK this site for all announcements of semi-finalists, finalists and winners of this competition, and for other announcements of our programs and events.

As with all our titles, The Emigrant and Other Stories and Crazy Mountain are available at all online sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookShop, Abe’s, Powell’s, etc., as well as through special order at  your neighborhood bookstore.