FC2 is delighted to announce that final judge K-Ming Chang has selected Marimo, Mon Amour, by Karen An-hwei Lee, as winner of the 2025 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize! FC2 will publish Marimo, Mon Amour in the Fall of 2026.
Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of the novels The Maze of Transparencies, Sonata in K, and Love Chronicles from the Octopodes, all published by Ellipsis Press in Jackson Heights, New York. She holds an MFA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora, was selected for the Cambria Sinophone World Series (2013). Lee has also authored several poetry collections, most recently The Beautiful Immunity from Tupelo Press. Her short works have appeared in Washington Square Review, The London Magazine, Kenyon Review, Poetry Ireland, Michigan Quarterly, Image: Art, Faith, Mystery, and other journals. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she lives in greater Chicago.
Karen, welcome to the collective! We also want to recognize the other finalists that, although they did not win, were sent to the contest judge:
- Thrilltopia by Jessica Alexander
- Diptych by Kevin Allardice
- A Sky So Sharp by Dustin Hoffman
- We are Patches of Smiling Bones by Kasimma
- Nice Nice Nice by Christina Milletti
Sincere thanks to everybody who entered, and to contest judge K-Ming Chang.
The reading period for the 2026 FC2 Innovative Fiction Prizes will open on August 15, 2025. Winners receive cash awards and publication. Judges will be announced in May.
The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize is funded through the Jarvis & Constance Doctorow Family Foundation.
