We are delighted to announce that Hannah Hindley has won the 2024 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Her manuscript, Love and Also Fish, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in Spring 2026. Hindley will also receive a $1,000 honorarium. All entries were screened by the editors, and our guest judge, Beth Nguyen, chose a winner from among the finalists. All of us at River Teeth are grateful to the many writers who submitted their books to the competition this year and to Beth Nguyen for sharing her time and expertise to choose the winning manuscript.

About the winning manuscript, Nguyen writes:

“In describing Love and Other Fish I could use words like wonder, heartbreak, astonishment, clarity, rumination, and understanding. But what I really want to say is just, read this book. With its beautiful narratives and contemplations, Love and Other Fish explores the strangeness of human experience and the strangeness of looking back. How wonderful and immersive to be guided by such a wise and generous writer.”

Hannah holds a 100 Ton Master Near Coastal captain’s license, and much of her career has been spent aboard boats. Her work as a naturalist has carried her up and down the Pacific coast, where she has led  wooden boat expeditions in Alaska’s Inside Passage, backcountry trips in the glacier country of Wrangell St. Elias National Park, and kayaking adventures among the islands of the Sea of Cortez. Fish have always drifted near the heart of this watery career, and they become the focusing lens for Hannah’s collection of essays as she explores heartbreak and transformation—at both human and ecosystem scales.

Hannah graduated from Harvard University with degrees in English & American Literature & Language and Organismic & Evolutionary Biology. Her writing–and her parallel career as a wilderness guide and outdoor educator–bridge those studies. She is interested in both the poetry and the science of our human relationship with the environment. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of Arizona.

An essayist and narrative journalist, Hannah is especially interested in small creatures, big landscapes, and the scientists who love them. Her writing has appeared in journals and magazines including the Harvard Review, The Sun, and Hakai Magazine. She is the recipient of the Barry Lopez Prize in Nonfiction, the Thomas Wood Award in Journalism, the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, the Waterston Desert Writing Prize, and the Bill Waller Award for Nonfiction, among other accolades. One of her first-ever published pieces of writing was an essay about glacial melt in River Teeth in 2014!

We would also like to extend our warmest congratulations to all the 2024 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize finalists and semifinalists:

Winner

Hannah Hindley: Love and Other Fish

Finalists (in alphabetical order)

Sarah Aronson: Love Song to a Blue God
Gail Hosking: No Glory: A History, A Memoir, A Reckoning
Maureen Stanton: The Human Soup: Essays and Investigations
Heather Surls: Beyond the Jordan

Semifinalists (in alphabetical order)

Debra Dean: Daughterland: A Memoir
Ryan Dennis: Hill View of the Last Stand
Timothy Hillegonds: And You Will Call It Fate
Garret Keizer: Driving Briskly
Anna Redsand: Crevice: A Life Between Worlds

A list of past winners can be found on our website and you can find their books on the University of New Mexico Press site and wherever you buy books. Look for our most recent titles, including the 2023 winner Laura Julier’s Off Izaak Walton Road, and the 2022 winner Sarah Capdeville’s Aligning the Glacier’s Ghost

The 2025 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize will be open for submissions September 1 – October 31, 2025. Award-winning memoirist and essayist Ander Monson will serve as our final judge. We look forward to reading your manuscript!