2026 Prize Judges: Kazim Ali and Alvin Lu

We are pleased to announce that Kazim Ali will serve as final judge for the 2026 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books, encompassing multiple genres, include the volumes of poetry Inquisition; Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; and All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet, and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism, as well as founder of the small press Nightboat Books. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary’s College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

The 2026 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest will be judged by Alvin Lu. Alvin Lu lives in San Francisco. He is the author of the novels Daydreamers, from Fiction Collective 2, and The Hell Screens. He is an MFA recipient from Brown University and winner of the John Williams Prize for Prose. Recently he was guest Prose Editor at the literary magazine Your Impossible Voice. Other writings have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, The Dodge, Denver Quarterly, Firmament, new_sinews, Rain Taxi, ZYZZYVA, and the Akashic Books anthology San Francisco Noir.

Please note two important changes to FC2’s manuscript contests that will begin this year. First, the Sukenick Prize, formerly $1,500, will increase to $3,000 thanks to a donation by Julia Frey, widow of FC2 co-founder Ronald Sukenick. Second, the Doctorow Prize, which was previously open only to writers with at least three published books of fiction, will now be open to writers with at least three published books in any genre; the manuscript submitted for the prize must still be fiction, but we now encourage submissions from established poets, playwrights, memoirists, and other writers less easily defined. Sincere thanks to Julia Frey for her support of the Sukenick Prize, and to the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for its support of the Doctorow Prize.

Submissions for both prizes will be open August 15–November 1 via Submittable.