James Baker Hall Book Award for a Short Story Collection
Accents Publishing is pleased to continue the partnership with the
James Baker Hall Foundation for the prestigious yearly James Baker Hall Book Award. In 2025, the award will recognize an unpublished collection of short stories by a Kentucky author. We define Kentucky author as someone who lives in Kentucky, has lived in Kentucky, has strong ties to Kentucky or whose work features a prominent Kentucky theme. The author of the winning manuscript will receive a $3000 award and the manuscript will be published the following year by Accent Publishing, with the standard Accents Publishing contract.
The winner of the inaugural James Baker Hall Award was Wesley Houp for his poetry book,
Strung Out Along the Endless Branch which was selected by judge Greg Pape. The book premiere gala is scheduled for May 22
nd at 6 pm at the Lyric Theater. Information and tickets can be found
here.
Award: $3000 plus publication with the standard Accents Publishing contract
Eligibility: Writers 18 or older. Current students of the judge, as well as personal friends and family may not submit.
Manuscript preparation: The submitted manuscript must be anonymous. The author's name should not appear anywhere in the text.
Deadline: Manuscripts can be submitted between April 1
st and June 30
th. Winner and finalists will be announced in the Fall.
Submission: Only electronic submissions will be considered. Email your anonymous manuscript to
accents.publishing@gmail.com. Include a brief bio in the body of the email.
Judging: Acclaimed author Toni Ann Johnson will be the final judge.
Fees: None. There is no submission fee.
The James Baker Hall Foundation
The mission of the James Baker Hall Foundation is to preserve and protect our legacy of past great Kentucky writers by investing in future great Kentucky writers.
Following the James Baker Hall Book Award each year, our Kentucky On-The-Road program offers the winner and finalists ongoing opportunities to promote their work across the Commonwealth while helping to nurture the next generation of Kentucky writers. Need based grants are available to support travel and mentoring.
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Toni Ann Johnson won the Flannery O'Connor Award for her linked story collection Light Skin Gone to Waste (UGA Press, 2022), which was selected for the prize and edited by Roxane Gay. The book was nominated for a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and shortlisted for the 2024 Saroyan Prize. A novella,
Homegoing, won Accents Publishing's inaugural novella contest in 2020 and was released by the press in 2021. Johnson's first novel, Remedy for a Broken Angel (2014), was nominated for a 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Johnson's short fiction has appeared in the Coachella Review, Hunger Mountain, Callaloo Journal, Fiction Magazine, and many other publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, and she's been a Sundance Screenwriter's Lab fellow, a Kimbilio fellow, a Hurston/Wright fellow, and a Callaloo Writing Workshop fellow. She's received additional support for her writing from the One-Story Summer Conference, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 2024, she was selected by Crystal Wilkinson as one of the inaugural winners of the Screen Door Press Prize for her linked story collection But Where's Home? The collection is forthcoming from the new imprint of the University Press of Kentucky in February of 2026.
