The Pushcart Prize is an American

literary prize A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author. Organizations Most literary awards come with a corresponding award ceremony. Ma ...

published by

Pushcart Press Pushcart Press is a publishing house established in 1972 by Bill Henderson (a one-time associate editor at Doubleday) and is perhaps most famous for its Pushcart Prize and for the anthology of prize winners it publishes annually. The press has ...

that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to submit up to six works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976. It is supported and staffed by volunteers.

Editors

The founding editors were Anaïs Nin,

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing mo ...

, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern,

Gordon Lish Gordon Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of t ...

, Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph,

Leslie Fiedler Leslie Aaron Fiedler (March 8, 1917 – January 29, 2003) was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American lit ...

Nona Balakian Nona Balakian ( Armenian: Նոնա Պալագեան, Constantinople, September 4, 1918 - New York City, April 5, 1991) was a literary critic and an editor at the '' New York Times Sunday Book Review''. She served on the Pulitzer Prize committee and ...

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

Paul Engle Paul Engle (October 12, 1908 – March 22, 1991), was an American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and as co-founder of the International W ...

Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel '' Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote ''Shadow and Act'' (1964), a collec ...

Reynolds Price Edward Reynolds Price (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 2011) was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist and James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in Biblical ...

, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, Bill Henderson and

William Phillips William Phillips may refer to: Entertainment * William Phillips (editor) (1907–2002), American editor and co-founder of ''Partisan Review'' * William T. Phillips (1863–1937), American author * William Phillips (director), Canadian film-make ...

. Many guest editors have served this collection over the years. They are listed in each edition that they edited. Over 200 contributing editors make nominations for each edition. They are listed on the masthead.

Winners

Each edition of the Pushcart Prize includes a complete index of presses and writers reprinted in the anthology since 1976. More than 2,000 writers and 600 presses have been selected. Among the writers who received early recognition in Pushcart Prize anthologies were:

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...

Steven Barthelme Steven Barthelme (born 1947) is the author of numerous short stories and essays. His published works include ''And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story'', ''Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss'' (with brother Frederick Barthelme), ...

Rick Bass Rick may refer to: People *Rick (given name), a list of people with the given name *Alan Rick (born 1976), Brazilian politician, journalist, pastor and television personality * Johannes Rick (1869–1946), Austrian-born Brazilian priest and myco ...

, Charles Baxter,

Bruce Boston Bruce Boston (born 1943) is an American speculative fiction writer and poet. Early years Bruce Boston was born in Chicago and grew up in Southern California.Diane SeversonInterview with Bruce Boston''Amazing Stories'' March 15, 2013 (accessed S ...

Anne Carson Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor. Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the Unit ...

Raymond Carver Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s. Early life Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mil ...

Joshua Clover Joshua Clover (born December 30, 1962 in Berkeley, California) is a writer and a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Davis. He is a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been t ...

Junot Diaz Junot is a French name that may refer to the following notable people: ;Given name *Junot Díaz (born 1968), Dominican American ;Surname * Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantes (1784–1838), French writer * Jean-Andoche Junot, 1st Duke of Abrantès (17 ...

Andre Dubus Andre Jules Dubus II (August 11, 1936 – February 24, 1999) was an American short story writer and essayist. Biography Early life and education Andre Jules Dubus II was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the youngest child of Katherine (Burke) ...

William H. Gass William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...

, Suzanne Kamata, Seán Mac Falls,

William Monahan William J. Monahan (born November 3, 1960) is an American screenwriter and novelist. His second produced screenplay was ''The Departed'', a film that earned him a Writers Guild of America Award and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Wr ...

Paul Muldoon Paul Muldoon (born 20 June 1951) is an Irish poet. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he is currently both the Howard G. B. Clark '21 University P ...

, Tim O'Brien,

Lance Olsen Lance Olsen (born October 14, 1956) is an American writer known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge. Biography Lance Olsen was born in New Jersey. He received a ...

Miha Mazzini Miha Mazzini (born 3 June 1961 in Jesenice, Yugoslavia) is a Slovenian writer, screenwriter and film director with thirty published books, translated in ten languages. He has a PhD in anthropology from the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis and ha ...

Peter Orner Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, two story collections and a book of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creative writing at ...

Kevin Prufer Kevin D. Prufer (born 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American poet, academic, editor, and essayist. His most recent books are ''How He Loved Them'' ( Four Way Books, 2018),''Churches'' ( Four Way Books, 2014), ''In A Beautiful Country'' ( Four ...

Kay Ryan Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named ...

Mona Simpson Mona Simpson (née Jandali; June 14, 1957) is an American novelist. She has written six novels and studied English at the University of California, Berkeley and Languages and Literature at Columbia University. She won a Whiting Award for her fir ...

, Ana Menéndez,

Ladette Randolph Ladette Randolph is an American author and editor. Ladette Randolph is the author of five books: three novels: ''Private Way', Haven’s Wake'' and ''A Sandhills Ballad'', a short story collection, ''This is Not the Tropics'', and a memoir, ''Leav ...

Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar (کاوه اکبر) is an Iranian-American poet and scholar. Early life and education Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989, and grew up across the United States including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana. He moved ...

and

Wells Tower Wells Tower (born April 14, 1973) is an American writer of short stories, non-fiction, feature films and television. In 2009 he published his first short story collection, ''Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) to ...

Recognition

The anthology has earned national recognition. ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' praised it as " st reading for anyone interested in the present and future of America's arts and letters". Pushcart Press was awarded the 1979 Carey Thomas Prize for Publisher of the Year by ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

''. The Pushcart Prize series was honored with the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2005, and the Poets & Writers/Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers award in 2006.

References

{{Authority control American literary awards American poetry awards 1976 establishments in New York (state) Awards established in 1976