Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

The Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction highlights the short story from the previous year’s Ploughshares issues that editors consider the strongest, extending a tradition that began with the journal’s earlier Cohen Awards. Established in 2011 and funded by novelist Alice Hoffman, the prize offers $2,500 and has become a marker of writers whose work later appears in major books and national literary conversations. Recent recipients include Jen Silverman, Molly Aitken, Kashona Notah, and Kaitlyn Greenidge, underscoring the prize’s role in tracing the early moments of notable contemporary fiction writers' careers.

The Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction stands as one of Ploughshares’ signature recognitions, honoring the short story that most distinguished itself in the journal’s pages over the previous year. Established in 2011 and sponsored by the acclaimed novelist and longtime Ploughshares patron Alice Hoffman, the annual prize reflects the journal’s emphasis on narrative precision, emotional acuity, and work that signals lasting literary potential. The award carries a $2,500 honorarium and includes a published profile of the winning author in the journal’s spring issue. Because the prize functions as an editorial selection rather than an open competition, it is not open to submissions; every story published in Ploughshares during the eligible year is considered.

Across its history, the prize has recognized writers whose fiction demonstrates both remarkable craft and early evidence of the trajectories they would go on to chart in books, residencies, and major national awards. Recent winners reflect a broad range of contemporary storytelling. Jen Silverman’s “In the Next World, Maybe,” selected in 2024, expands on the author’s ongoing interest in fractured identities and surreal emotional landscapes. Molly Aitken’s 2023 winner, “Thresholds,” appeared during the momentum of her debut novel and further affirmed her command of voice-driven narrative. Earlier recipients include Kashona Notah’s “Bettie Page and Jimmy Free Bird,” Fei Sun’s mythic “Half Bowl of Mengpo’s Soup,” and Kaitlyn Greenidge’s “Doers of the World,” chosen a year before her novel Libertie brought her national acclaim.

The prize also serves as a connective thread linking Ploughshares’ contemporary fiction to its earlier tradition of recognizing standout work through the Cohen Awards, which ran from 1986 until 2010. Sponsored by longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen, the awards honored the strongest fiction and poetry published in the journal each year. Many recipients have since become central figures in American literature. Winners include Andrew Sean Greer, who later won the Pulitzer Prize for Less; Louise Glück, who went on to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature; Mona Simpson, whose early story “Lonnie Tishman” appeared years before her major novels; and Julie Orringer, recognized well before the publication of The Invisible Bridge.

The lineage of both awards creates a continuous record of short fiction that has shaped contemporary American writing. The combined lists of winners document early work by writers who later joined the catalogs of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Knopf; Graywolf; and other leading publishers, as well as those who went on to hold fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, and numerous residency programs.

The Alice Hoffman Award functions as a marker of long-term promise within the journal’s editorial landscape. Each selection underscores the role of the short story as both a complete artistic form and a proving ground for the next generation of fiction writers, as well as a tradition that connects the earliest Cohen Award recipients of the 1980s to today’s emerging authors whose work will shape the decades ahead.