Eludia Award

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

THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR THE ELUDIA AWARD IS MARCH 15, 2021

The Eludia Award is offered annually for a first book-length unpublished novel or collection of stories.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 $1000 plus a standard publication contract.

The next round of manuscript submissions deadlines on March 15, 2021.  

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 that the 2019 winner of our Eludia Award is Elise Atchison of Livingston, Montana, for her novel, Crazy Mountain. Our estimated publication date for Crazy Mountain is late 2021/early 2022.  A list of our semi-finalists and finalists for the 2019 cycle can be found here.

Our 2018 winner of our Eludia Award was Justine Dymond of Belchertown, Massachusetts, for her story collection The Emigrant and Other Stories.  Her manuscript is currently in preparation for publication in January/February 2021.  The 2017 winner, Catharine Leggett’s, collection of stories, In Progress, was published in June 2019, and is widely available at Barnes & Noble, Abe’s Books, Waterstones, Walmart, Amazon (paperback and eBook), all other online sellers as well as for order at your neighborhood indy bookstore through Ingram Distributors.

Please be patient. After delays caused by the COVID shut downs, we will be announcing the semi-finalists and finalists of the most recent round of submissions shortly.  Please follow us to receive notification of our updates.  Reading each manuscript at least three times – often four and five times – before naming our semi-finalists and finalists takes many months. We encourage you to submit to other opportunities while we are deliberating, and ask only that you notify us if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere.

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.

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.