Celebrating the Best of Independently Published Literature
The CLMP Firecracker Awards for Independently Published Literature are given annually to celebrate books and magazines that make a significant contribution to our literary culture and the publishers that strive to introduce important voices to readers far and wide. Prizes are awarded in the categories of Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Magazine/General Excellence, and Magazine/Best Debut. Each year, CLMP also awards the Lord Nose Award, given to a publisher or editor in recognition of a lifetime of work in literary publishing.
Each winner in the book categories will receive $2,000–$1,000 for the press and $1,000 for the author or translator–and each winner in the magazine categories will receive $1,000. In addition, a national publicity campaign spotlights and promotes our winning titles each year. In partnership with the American Booksellers Association, promotional materials—including a press release and shelf talkers featuring the winning titles—are distributed to over 500 independent booksellers across the country. Winners are also promoted in CLMP’s newsletters, on our website, and through a dedicated social media campaign. The publishers of winning titles receive a free one-year membership to CLMP, and magazine winners receive a one-year CLMP Member subscription to Submittable.
The submission period for the 2025 Firecracker Awards will open in fall 2024. See below for more information and guidelines.
2024 Firecracker Awards Winners
FICTION: You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy, published by Red Hen Press
From the Judges:
“Juliana Lamy’s You Were Watching from the Sand is a commanding debut that mingles the magical with the mundane. These vibrant, masterfully wrought stories weave the otherworldly into the psychological and interpersonal, grounding Lamy’s characters not only in their unique voices, corporealities, and sense of place, but also in the complex racial and class dynamics that determine their lives. The language in this collection crackles with a propulsive energy, and there’s not a weak story to be found. Lamy’s impressive range is on full display; this is likely just the beginning of what looks to be a thrilling literary career.”
Juliana Lamy is the author of You Were Watching from the Sand. She received a bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard College, where she won the Harvard University Le Baron Russell Briggs Undergraduate Fiction Prize and the Gordon Parks Essay Prize for Nonfiction. Lamy also received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She currently lives in South Florida, where she was raised after immigrating with her family from Haiti.
Red Hen Press, founded in 1994 and based in Los Angeles, California, is a nonprofit independent literary press that publishes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The press seeks to build a community of readers and writers who are actively engaged in the essential human practice known as literature.
CREATIVE NONFICTION: The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World by Elizabeth Rush, published by Milkweed Editions
From the Judges:
“The Quickening is an excellent chronicle of the deteriorating Antarctic glaciers at a critical crossroads with the author’s own reckoning with the ethics of bringing new life into a rapidly changing world. An incredible journey and an essential antidote to the settler masculinist-explorer narrative, The Quickening offers readers a chance to collectively refuse turning Antarctica into a passive symbol of the coming apocalypse. This is an inspiring document of an expedition powered by a deep understanding of the consequences that lie ahead and invites us, her readers, to turn and embrace hope.”
Elizabeth Rush is the author of The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World and Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Rush’s work has appeared in a wide range of publications from the New York Times to Orion Magazine and Guernica. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Metcalf Institute. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.
Milkweed Editions, founded in 1980 and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a nonprofit independent publisher of literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The press’s mission is to identify, nurture, and publish transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it.
POETRY: The Limitless Heart by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, published by Haymarket Books
From the Judges:
“The sublime and evocative work of Boyce-Taylor is beautifully presented in this collection of new and previously published work. With expansive and intimate vision, Boyce-Taylor grapples with longing, grief, displacement, and motherhood among many other timely and engaging themes. Whether she is reminiscing about the sensuous surroundings of her homeland or mourning the loss of her beloved son, the poems are always lyrical, vivid, each piece imbued with powerful affirmation and profound abundance. This collection is an astonishing achievement and beautiful gathering of a life’s work.”
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist, whose poetry collections include The Limitless Heart; Mama Phife Represents (Haymarket Books, 2021), recipient of the 2022 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, given by The Publishing Triangle; Arrival (Northwestern University Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; Convincing the Body (Vintage Entity Press, 2005); Raw Air (Fly By Night Press, 2000), and Night When Moon Follows (Long Shot Productions, 2000). She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. The founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series, Boyce-Taylor has led workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. She is a VONA fellow and the recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, given by Poets & Writers. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Haymarket Books, founded in 2001 and based in Chicago, Illinois, is an independent publisher of books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice. The press strives to make its books a vibrant and organic part of social movements and the education and development of a critical, engaged, and internationalist left.
MAGAZINE / BEST DEBUT: SWING
From the Judges:
“SWING has made a bold outing as a journal that gathers evocative, fine-tuned writing from the South and beyond. The debut issue is characterized by musical, deftly-formed poems, stories that conjure rich psychological and physical landscapes, and essays that embrace contradiction and irresolution. The editors’ thoughtful, and sometimes sly, juxtapositions of pieces made the journal a delight to read, and one where questions of place, family, change, and uncertainty ripple through its pages. The journal drew us in with the clear and crisp design of its print volume and website, as well as its welcoming tone and ethos. SWING is a journal to read from front to back, and a testament to the literary community that its publisher, The Porch, has built in Nashville for years.”
SWING, founded in 2023, is a magazine published by the nonprofit literary collective The Porch in Nashville, Tennessee. SWING strives to be a print magazine with the energy and verve of its home city where new influences course through the old. The magazine is a home for the emerging writer to the renowned, from the discovered to the too-long neglected, that aims to publish creative works of all genres and hybrids that embrace complication.
MAGAZINE / GENERAL EXCELLENCE: Words Without Borders
From the Judges:
“Words Without Borders (WWB) is a rare literary and cultural space where one can encounter writing from over 140 countries. The work WWB publishes reflects a radically capacious, global vision of literature, as well as an unstinting commitment to the art of translation and the precise, dedicated work of translators. The publication’s mission of making the world’s literature accessible to wider audiences is evident in its thoughtful curation of literature by country, theme, and contributor; its packages designed for the classroom; and the strong suite of accessibility tools on its website. Publishing translations can be complex and delicate work, and WWB has set the bar high with its steady output of compelling, politically trenchant, and varied work.”
Words Without Borders, founded in 2003, is a digital magazine dedicated to cultivating global awareness by expanding access to international writing and creating a bridge between readers, writers, and translators. Driven by the belief that reading literature can lead to empathy and understanding, Words Without Borders seeks out new writing from around the globe, makes it available in expert English translation, and actively promotes it to a wide US and international audience.
2024 Lord Nose Award Recipient
Jim Perlman, Founding Editor and Publisher of Holy Cow! Press
2024 Firecracker Awards Finalists
Fiction
Landscapes by Christine Lai, published by Two Dollar Radio
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy, published by Red Hen Press
The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patrícia Melo, translated by Sophie Lewis, published by Restless Books
The Girl Before Her by Line Papin, translated by Adriana Hunter and Ly Lan Dill, published by Kaya Press
Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine, published by Tin House
Creative Nonfiction
None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza, published by Feminist Press
Holy American Burnout! by Sean Enfield, published by Split/Lip Press
On Community by Casey Plett, published by Biblioasis
The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World by Elizabeth Rush, published by Milkweed Editions
Otherwise by Julie Marie Wade, published by Autumn House Press
Poetry
The Limitless Heart by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, published by Haymarket Books
Village by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, published by Coffee House Press
Rebozos of love by Juan Felipe Herrera, published by FlowerSong Press
Hydra Medusa by Brandon Shimoda, published by Nightboat Books
Kaan and Her Sisters by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, published by Trio House Press
Magazines/Best Debut
Changing Skies
Folly
Mister Magazine
Short Reads
SWING
Magazines/General Excellence
The Common
Lampblack
LIBER: A Feminist Review
Virginia Quarterly Review
Words Without Borders
2024 Firecracker Award Judges
Fiction
Zeyn Joukhadar, author of The Thirty Names of Night, published by Atria Books
Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, author of What We Fed to the Manticore, published by Tin House
Kevin Sampsell, events coordinator and small-press book buyer at Powell’s Books
Creative Nonfiction
Edgar Gomez, author of High Risk Homosexual: A Memoir, published by Soft Skull Press
Raquel Gutiérrez, author of Brown Neon, published by Coffee House Press
Gaël LeLamer, head book buyer at Books & Books
Poetry
Allison Escoto, head librarian and education director at The Center for Fiction
Crystal Wilkinson, author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, published by Clarkson Potter
Shelley Wong, author of As She Appears, published by YesYes Books
Magazine
Sam Campbell, managing editor, The Arkansas International
Manuel Gonzales, fiction editor, Bennington Review
Dana Isokawa, editor in chief, The Margins
About the Lord Nose Award
The annual Lord Nose Award is given to a publisher or editor in recognition of a lifetime of work in literary publishing to honor and celebrate the memory of Jonathan Williams, founder and publisher of the now legendary literary press, The Jargon Society, as well as an accomplished poet, photographer, raconteur, and cultural observer with a mordant wit and a clear eye for artistic excellence wherever it might be found. Over a period of more than fifty years, beginning in 1951, Jargon published 85 books and 30 broadsides and booklets, all focused on his unique vision of poetry, prose, and photography that truly mattered—that needed to be discovered, nurtured, and brought into the world. His commitment to making books as compellingly beautiful objects never wavered. Jargon stands as one of the most important literary presses of the twentieth century. It is an exemplar of Jonathan’s lifelong dedication to words and art, of discovery and joy, the social act of making public the work he believed in. The Lord Nose Award was established in 2017 by David Wilk, with support from Jeffery Beam, Stanley Finch, and Tom Meyer. There is no application process; honorees are chosen based on their work and accomplishments. The award is administered by CLMP.
About the Firecracker Awards
A national publicity campaign spotlights and promotes our winning titles each year. In partnership with the American Booksellers Association, promotional materials—including a press release and shelf talkers featuring the winning titles—are distributed to over 500 independent booksellers across the country. Winners are also promoted in CLMP’s newsletters, on our website, and through a dedicated social media campaign. The publishers of winning titles receive a free one-year membership to CLMP, and magazine winners also receive a one-year CLMP Member subscription to Submittable.
Submissions to the 2025 Firecracker Awards will be accepted in the fall.
Finalists will be announced in spring 2025; the winners will be announced at the Firecracker Awards ceremony in June 2025.
Submission Guidelines
- There is no limit to the number of unique entries publishers may submit.
- The entry fee is $65 ($55 for CLMP Members) for the first submission and $30 ($25 for CLMP Members) for each additional entry. Interested in becoming a CLMP Member? Join now.
Book Categories
- Books must be published by an independent publisher during the 2024 calendar year.
- Books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for adults are eligible. This includes English-language books from international publishers, books in translation, and graphic novels.
- Self-published books, including books published with “hybrid” publishers in which authors pay for part or all of publication costs, are not eligible.
- Children’s and young adult books are not eligible. Anthologies are not eligible.
- Entries should be submitted by the publisher. However, authors may submit their own books if the publisher consents to the entry of the book. If an author submits their book themselves, they must provide contact information for the publisher in the application.
Magazine Categories
- Magazines must be independent and literary in nature (primarily publishing fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and/or literary reviews).
- Magazines submitting in the General Excellence category must have published regularly for at least the past two years.
- Magazines submitting in the Best Debut category must have launched in the 2022, 2023, or 2024 calendar years.
- Both print and digital magazines are eligible.
- Magazines may only be submitted in one category.
CLMP reserves the right to determine all submissions’ eligibility, and its decision will be final. Guidelines and eligibility criteria are subject to change prior to the 2025 submission period opens.
The Firecracker Awards are sponsored by
