By Megan Lutes
We are delighted to announce that Laura Julier (pictured here) has won the 2023 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Her manuscript, Off Izaak Walton Road, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in Spring 2025. Julier will also receive a $1,000 honorarium. All entries were screened by the editors, and our guest judge, Lacy M. Johnson, 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 Lacy M. Johnson for sharing her time and expertise to choose the winning manuscript and runner-up.
About the winning manuscript, Johnson writes:
“Off Izaak Walton Road asks us why some places hold a grip on our imaginations, what it is about these places that allows us to be more fully ourselves, and how these places change the stories we tell about who we are and the world in which we live. Written with clarity, candor, and a tenderness of attention that is profoundly moving, this book shows the often-transformative power of loss, solace, and joy.”
Laura Julier served for ten years as editor of Fourth Genre, the literary journal of nonfiction. As professor of writing at Michigan State University, she served as director of the Professional Writing Program and taught courses in environmental and place-based writing, creative nonfiction, and editing and publishing. She is co-editor of the collection, Nonfiction, the Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones. Her nonfiction essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, the most recent forthcoming in Under the Gum Tree. She lives in Iowa City with her spouse, the writer Kate Carroll de Gutes, and works as a chaplain at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
We would also like to extend our warmest congratulations to Dwaine Rieves, our 2023 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize runner up, and to all the finalists and semifinalists:
Winner
Laura Julier: Off Izaak Walton Road
Runner-Up
Dwaine Rieves: Cold in Mississippi: A Memoir of the Human Soul in Medicine
Finalists (in alphabetical order)
Fleda Brown: End-of-the-Line Club: A Diary
Amy Hassinger: Apocalypse Always: A Memoir in Fragments
Jen Knox: Despite the Work
Semifinalists (in alphabetical order)
Anne P. Beatty: Rich Country: Views from a Nepali Classroom, the American South, and Beyond
Corinna Cook: Another Sense of Time
A. Molotkov: A Broken Russia Inside Me
Andi Myles: God-Haunted: A Memoir of Evangelical Deconstruction in Lyric Essays
Jeremy Smith: Brave the Night
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 2022 winner Sarah Capdeville’s Aligning the Glacier’s Ghost, and the 2021 winner Robert Lunday’s Disequilibria.
The 2024 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize will be open for submissions August 1 – October 31, 2024. Award-winning memoirist and essayist Beth Nguyen will serve as our final judge. We look forward to reading your manuscript!
