Debut fiction prizes explained: the awards that read first novels

A first novel has a short window to be noticed. It comes out with no track record, often from a small press with a small budget, and within a season it competes with hundreds of other new books for review space and shelf space. Prizes are one of the few things that can widen that window. A shortlist line on a cover can keep a debut in bookshops for another year.

I follow first novels more closely than anything else I read, and I find the prize calendar confusing even so. The awards have different owners, different age limits, different ideas of what a "debut" is, and very different ways of finding books. This guide sets out the main ones I can check against their own organizers' pages. It is for readers who want to know what a sticker on a cover means, and for writers who want to understand how the system works before their own book exists.

A note on figures: prize money and deadlines change from year to year, so I describe them loosely or not at all. For current rules, always go to the prize's own site.

The short version

The prizes one by one

PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel

The oldest debut award on this list. Mary Hemingway, a PEN member, set it up in 1976 in memory of her husband, to recognize distinguished first books of fiction. It has been administered by PEN organizations, PEN New England for many years and PEN America from 2017, with the support of the Hemingway Foundation and Society, and the administering body has changed more than once, so check whose site holds the current rules. The rules are strict about the "first" part: the author must not have published a full-length book of fiction before, and the book must come from a US press. Self-published books are not eligible.

Young Lions Fiction Award

The New York Public Library gives this award to an American writer aged 35 or younger, for a novel or a collection of stories. It began in 2001 and is tied to the library's Young Lions, its circle of younger members, who help read the entries. It is not strictly a debut prize: a second or third book qualifies if the writer is young enough. In practice many winners are first books, because so few writers have more than one book out by 35.

5 Under 35

The National Book Foundation, which runs the National Book Awards, started this honor in 2006. It goes to five fiction writers under 35 who have published their first and only book of fiction, a novel or a story collection, within the past five years. The selection works differently from most prizes. According to the foundation's page, honorees are chosen by past National Book Award honorees and past 5 Under 35 honorees, and publishers cannot nominate anyone. There is no entry. You are simply chosen.

The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

The Center for Fiction, a nonprofit in New York devoted to fiction and its readers, gives an annual prize for a debut novel by an American writer, with a shortlist that is often one of the most useful reading lists of the year for anyone who likes first books. Publishers put the novels forward.

Whiting Awards

These are not debut prizes, but they do the same work. Since 1985 the Whiting Foundation has given awards each year to ten emerging writers across fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, for early accomplishment and promise. The foundation's description is clear about the method: it accepts no applications and no unsolicited nominations. A pool of nominators, changed every year, each proposes a candidate, and a committee chooses. Nominators and selectors stay anonymous, and candidates are not supposed to know they are being considered. The foundation also says that age is no barrier, which matters for people who start writing late.

Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize

Dylan Thomas died at 39, and the prize in his name, run by Swansea University, is for a published literary work in English by an author aged 39 or under. It is open to fiction in all its forms, which in the university's own description includes poetry, novels, short stories and drama, and it is international. As with the Young Lions award, a debut is not required, but young writers' first and second books dominate the lists.

Desmond Elliott Prize

For years this was the best-known award for first novels in the UK and Ireland, named after the literary agent and publisher Desmond Elliott. It ran from 2008 to 2022, and the National Centre for Writing in Norwich took it over in its later years. Publishers submitted literary fiction debuts. The prize itself has now ended, and the Centre describes its Season of Debuts program for early-career novelists as the prize's legacy. I include it because its winners and shortlists are still a good reading list, and because you will keep seeing it on paperback covers.

Who actually enters a book

Here is the part most first-time writers do not expect. For most of these prizes, the author does not enter the book. The publisher does.

That is true of the PEN/Hemingway, where the current rules say publishers and literary agents submit and authors may not submit their own work. It is true of the Center for Fiction prize and of the Desmond Elliott in its day. Publishers decide which of their books to put forward, they pay attention to deadlines, and some prizes limit how many titles each publisher may send, so a press with several debuts in one season has to choose.

Two of the prizes above go the other way. The 5 Under 35 and the Whiting both refuse entries entirely and rely on chosen readers. Nobody can push a book onto those lists, which is part of why they are prized.

For a debut author, the practical upshot is modest. Ask your editor, politely and early, which prizes the press plans to enter, and make sure your book's publication date and your own details (age, citizenship) are on record if a prize depends on them. Then let it go. Practice varies by publisher, and no prize can be counted on.

A worked example: one debut's prize year

Salvatore Scibona's first novel, The End, is a useful case because its path through the prize calendar is well documented and because this site's address once belonged to it. Graywolf Press, the independent press in Minneapolis, published it in 2008. It is a dense, demanding book about an Italian immigrant neighborhood in Ohio on one August day in 1953, the kind of novel that rarely gets marketing money.

That autumn it became a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, a general prize open to any book, not a debut award, which is itself a lesson: first novels can and do compete in the open field. Then, in March 2009, the New York Public Library gave it the Young Lions Fiction Award. The same year Scibona received a Whiting Award, which, as above, nobody can apply for. Our profile of Salvatore Scibona and his two novels sets out the full list, and the further reading page on The End links the announcements.

What the sequence shows is how the different kinds of prize reinforce each other. An open award brought attention, an age-limited award confirmed it, and a nomination-only award followed from readers who had noticed. None of it was predictable from the book's first weeks in print.

A second example: which prizes could this book enter?

Here is an invented case to show how the eligibility lines work in practice. Imagine a novelist, Ruth Okafor, aged 37, a US citizen living in Ohio. Her first novel, about a family that runs a tire shop in a river town, is coming out from a university press. She has published stories in magazines but no book.

• PEN/Hemingway: eligible, if her publisher submits it. It is a debut novel from a US press.
• Center for Fiction First Novel Prize: eligible, if her publisher puts it forward.
• Young Lions: not eligible. She is over 35.
• 5 Under 35: not eligible, for the same reason.
• Dylan Thomas Prize: eligible on age, since she is under 40, if the book is entered under the prize's rules.
• Whiting: possible, but only if a nominator she has never met puts her name forward. Nothing she can do about it.

That is the whole map for one book, and it is smaller than most writers hope. The age limits cut hard, and many debut novelists are older than the limits allow. That is one more reason the general prizes and the no-age prizes matter.

Questions readers ask

Does a shortlist mean the book is good?

It means a small panel of judges liked it in a given year, among the books that were entered. That is a real signal, and I trust some shortlists more than most bestseller lists. But a great debut that was never entered, or was published by a press that missed a deadline, will not be there.

Can a self-published novel win these prizes?

Generally not. The PEN/Hemingway rules exclude self-published books, and most of the others work through publishers. A self-published book followed by a traditionally published one is a more complicated case, and the rules differ from prize to prize.

Are there debut prizes outside the US and UK?

Yes, many, in many languages. This guide sticks to the English-language prizes whose rules I could check against their own organizers' pages.

Which list should a reader follow?

If you want to find new writers before everyone else, the Center for Fiction shortlist and the 5 Under 35 honorees are the two I watch most closely. If you want to know what a book group will be arguing about next year, add the open prizes, and see our guide to book club questions for literary fiction for how to talk about them once you have chosen one.

More on first books, small presses and the prizes that notice them is on our first novels shelf.