Established in 1994, the Perkins Prize honors Barbara Perkins and George Perkins, the founders of both The Journal of Narrative Technique and the Society itself. The prize, awarded to the book making the most significant contribution to the study of narrative in a given year, provides $1,000 plus a contribution of $500 toward the winning author’s expenses for attending the Narrative Conference at which the award will be presented.

The Perkins Prize is conceived as a book prize rather than an author prize. All books on the topic of narrative, whether edited collections, collaboratively written books, or monographs, are eligible to compete. If an edited collection or collaboratively written book is selected, the prize goes to the editor(s) or the collaborators. The winner of the competition for books published in 2018 will be announced at the MLA Convention in Chicago in January 2020, and the prize will be presented in March 2020 at the Narrative Conference in New Orleans.

To nominate books with a copyright date of 2018, please send an email with “Perkins Prize” in the subject line to the chair of the judging committee, Dan Punday: dpunday@english.msstate.edu

Publisher, third-party, and self-nominations are all appropriate.  Copies of books must be sent directly to each of the three judges. Please indicate in the nominating email whether the publisher or the author will send the books. The deadline for receipt of books by the judges is July 1, 2019.

Books should be sent by authors or their publishers directly to each of the three committee members:

Dan Punday

Department of English

Mississippi State University, Box E

Mississippi State, MS 39762

Astrid Ensslin

200 Old Arts 

University of Alberta

Edmonton AB

T6G 2E6

Canada

Paul Dawson

School of the Arts and Media

University of New South Wales

NSW 2052

Australia