Utah Humanities - Utah Book Awards

The Utah Book Awards honor works of outstanding literary merit by Utah authors.

After a successful first year back, the Utah Book Awards honor works of outstanding literary merit by Utah authors. Awards are given based on the strength of the publication’s literary merit, lasting importance, and overall quality. The program seeks to recognize exceptional writing that makes a meaningful contribution to Utah’s literary culture.

The Utah Book Awards are a project of The Utah Center for the Book at Utah Humanities (an affiliate of The Library of Congress Center) and The League of Utah Writers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How are finalists and winners selected? Judges, composed of librarians, booksellers, and authors, evaluate every book submitted. They determine the list of notable books, finalists, and winners from each genre.

How do I submit a book for consideration for the 2026 Utah Book Awards? A book is eligible if it is written by an author currently living in the state of Utah and published between January 1, 2023 and January 1, 2026. Please see the submission guidelines below to make sure that both you and your book meet the eligibility requirements.

Submission Window: Submissions are open from 11/1/2025 to 1/31/2026. The Utah Book Awards is a Utah Humanities program, and our partner, the League of Utah Writers, generously donated the Submission Portal. Their logo is at the top of the portal below to indicate that you are submitting at the correct location.

Submission Guidelines

Complete the online entry form. Upload a digital (pdf) copy of your book. Pay the $40 entry fee using the online form.

SUBMIT YOUR BOOK

Submission Categories

General Fiction (for adult audiences): Full-length novels & collections of short stories by a single author are eligible. Collaborations are eligible if both (all) authors are current residents of Utah, with a 50,000-word minimum.
Speculative Fiction (for adult audiences: fantasy, science fiction, horror, alternate history, and more; speculative fiction is an encompassing genre that freely explores possibility and impossibility alike): Full-length novels & collections of short stories by a single author are eligible. Collaborations are eligible if both (all) authors are current residents of Utah, with a 50,000-word minimum.
General Nonfiction (for all audiences): Full-length works of general nonfiction, research, recipe book, etc. (not memoir).
Memoir/Narrative Nonfiction/Biography/Essay Collections (for adult audiences): Full-length works of memoir/biography/narrative nonfiction and collections of essays by a single author are eligible, 50,000-word minimum.
Poetry (single-author collection): Collections of poetry by a single author are eligible. A collection may consist entirely of new poems or of a new selection of work from throughout a writer’s career.
Middle Grade/Young Adult (audiences ages 10-18): middle-grade and young-adult books of fiction and nonfiction are eligible.
Illustrated and Picture Books (for any audience, illustrations comprise a significant portion of the work): Full-length graphic novels, graphic memoirs, early reader (picture books), or works of graphic nonfiction are eligible. Either the authors OR the illustrators must be Utah-based. Works intended for all age groups (adult, YA/middle grade, and early readers) will be considered.
Romance (for any audience): Stories where the central plot and character motivations revolve around a romantic relationship. Eligible works must include a defined plot, well-developed characters, and a clear narrative arc. Erotica is not eligible, and any sexual content must serve the story. Full-length novels & collections of short stories by a single author are eligible. Collaborations are eligible if both (all) authors are current residents of Utah, with a 50,000-word minimum.

General Eligibility Guidelines

Books must have been written, illustrated, or translated by permanent residents of Utah. Those on temporary placement or those who are regular vacationers to the state but who maintain residency elsewhere are not considered permanent residents. Writers must be living in Utah at the time their books are submitted and must continue as permanent residents at the time the awards are announced.
Any individual, organization, or company may enter a book in any appropriate category.
Anthologies or collaborations are eligible if ALL authors are Utah-based.
Self-published books are eligible.
Books must have been published in their original format during the calendar year between January 1, 2023 and January 1, 2026.
An author may be recognized for more than one book per year. Books by authors who have previously won a Utah Book Award are eligible.
Submission of a title confirms the following: Utah Center for the Book has permission to use the book cover, excerpts from the text, and publicity notices in any promotion of the Awards.
Each category has its own judging panel which draws from a variety of reading communities. The Utah Center for the Book and the book judges resolve all questions about eligibility; the judges determine the award winners. The decisions of the panels are final.

Recognition

Winners: a cash prize and an engraved plaque
Winners, Honorable Mentions, and Notable Reads:
- A banquet in their honor during the Utah Humanities Book Festival in October 2025
- Opportunity to join classrooms and speakers’ engagements across the state of Utah
- Statewide publicity surrounding the announcement of the Utah Book Awards
- Branded promotional materials

Judging

Round One: The panel chair collaborates with a team to compile a list of Notable Books (shortlist) in each genre.
Round Two: Panel Chair chooses Finalists from the Notable-Read shortlist.
Round Three: Our Guest Judges Select Winners. In 2026, the Winner announcement will be made at the Award Ceremony in October.

2026 Judges

Heather Sappenfield: YA/MG

Heather Mateus Sappenfield writes across genres. She’s published two contemporary YA novels, The View from Who I Was and Life at the Speed of Us, the latter a Colorado Book Awards finalist. Her story collection, Lyrics for Rock Stars, was featured on Colorado Public Radio, earned a Ben Franklin Award, an Earphones Award from AudioFile magazine, and was a finalist for the Audies. Her writing has also won the Danahy Fiction Prize and the Arthur Edelstein Prize, garnered seven Pushcart Prize nominations, and was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award. Her most recent MG novel, The River Between Hearts, was a Moonbeam Awards Medalist, a Nautilus Awards Medalist, a Reader’s Choice Award Medalist, and winner of a Reading the West Award.

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Benjamin Percy: Speculative Fiction

Benjamin Percy is the author of seven novels, the most recent among them The Sky Vault. He is also the author of The Unfamiliar Garden, The Ninth Metal , The Dead Lands , Red Moon, and The Wilding, as well as three books of short stories, Suicide Woods, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk. He broke in to comics in 2014, with a two-issue Batman story arc for Detective Comics. He is known for his celebrated runs on Nightwing, Green Arrow, Teen Titans, and James Bond. He He currently writes Wolverine, X-Force, and Ghost Rider for Marvel Comics. He also writes Devil’s Highway and Year Zero for AWA Studios.

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Jacob Shores-Argüello: Poetry

Jacob Shores-Argüello is a Costa Rican American poet and prose writer. He is the author of In The Absence of Clocks, which was awarded the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Competition, judged by Yusef Komunyakaa. Jacob is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, the Dzanc Books ILP International Literature Award, the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship in Provincetown, the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Fellowship, and the Amy Clampitt residency in Lenox, MA. His second book Paraíso was selected for the inaugural CantoMundo Poetry Prize judged by Aracelis Girmay. He is a 2018/019 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, a Lannan Literary Fellow for Poetry, and a current 2024-2025 Rome Prize winner in Literature. His poetry appears in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and The Academy of American Poets, among others. His fiction appears in The Oxford American, among others.

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Jeff Nichols: General Nonfiction

Originally from upstate New York with a degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo, Jeff Nichols was sent by the Navy to teach ROTC at the University of Utah and fell in love with the state. He began teaching at Westminster in 1995. Much of his training and past work has been in the social and cultural history of Utah and the 19th/early 20th century American West. In more recent years, he’s also been drawn to environmental history, especially in the Moab area and around the Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake.

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Sean Davis: Memoir/Narrative Nonfiction

Sean Davis is a published author, editor, and cultural commentator whose work explores war, identity, and the pull of place. He is the author of the war memoir Wax Bullet War, a firsthand account of modern conflict and its psychological aftermath, and the editor of the bestselling anthology City of Weird, which champions regional voices and unconventional storytelling. Sean holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University, where he focused on creative nonfiction and narrative craft.

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Mark Stevens: General Fiction

Mark Stevens is the author of The Flynn Martin Thriller series including No Lie Lasts Forever and Two Truths and A Lie, both from Thomas & Mercer; The Fireballer, and The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline, Lake of Fire, and The Melancholy Howl. Buried by the Roan, Trapline, and Lake of Fire were all finalists for the Colorado Book Award. Trapline won. Stevens has published short stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, and Denver Noir. Denver Noir went on to win the Colorado Book Award for Best Anthology in 2023. Stevens was one of three co-editors for Four Corners Voices, an anthology of fiction, essays, and poetry that won the Colorado Book Award for Best Anthology in 2025.

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Lisa Gabbert: Illustrated

Lisa Gabbert is Professor of Folklore Studies in the Department of English at Utah State University. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate classes, and she specializes in studies of landscape, festival, and occupational folklore. She is the author of Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change, and the Good of the Community, which examined a winter carnival in McCall, Idaho and the creation of community identity in the context of recreational tourism. Her second book, An Introduction to Vernacular Culture in America was co-authored with Keiko Wells and published in Japan. Her new book The Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore among Physicians, examines humor and folklore in medical contexts and will be published in August, 2024. She lives in Salt Lake City with her family and enjoys hiking, skiing, paddleboarding, and gardening.

Kathleen Broeder

Kathleen Broeder: Romance

Kathleen Broeder is the Special Collections Librarian in the Department of Library & Information Science at Southern Utah University. She holds two master’s degrees from the University at Albany, SUNY, in Information Science and History. Kathleen is interested in the interplay of local history with primary sources and uses archival organizational structures to share both with the community at-large. Her new co-authored book, St. George in the Images of America series, shares rare photographs and develops a holistic view of area history.

The Utah Book Awards 2025 Winners, Finalists, and Notable Reads

After a decade hiatus from hosting the Utah Book Awards, Utah Humanities and our partners are so excited to announce the 2025 Utah Book Awards Winners in seven categories. These books and authors represent the best of Utah’s vibrant, rich, and deep literary culture.

Congratulations to all our winners, finalists, and notable reads!

Along with the distinction of the award, the winners will receive a 500.00 cash honorarium. The winners, finalists, and notable reads recipients will have a reception held in their honor on October 10, 2025 during the 28th Annual Utah Humanities Book Festival and opportunities to share their work across the state over the next year.

Thank you so much to our judges for all of their hard work. It was not easy to pick these winners out of the many, many submissions. Thank you to our partners at League of Utah Writers and Utah Arts and Museums for all their guidance and support.

Our 2026 Utah Book Awards will open for submissions on November 1, 2025. If you entered this year, please note that you are eligible to enter next year, as long as you are not 2025 Winner (2025 Winners will be eligible again in 2027). There will be a new set of judges each year, so a new set of eyes may yield a different outcome. The 2026 Utah Book Awards will be open to books published from January 1, 2023 to October 31, 2026.

GENERAL FICTION

We are excited to announce the 2025 Utah Book Awards Notable Reads for General Fiction:

WINNER: Into the Wind by Maggie St. Claire
FINALIST: What Falls Away by Karin Anderson
FINALIST: The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
NOTABLE READ: Poor As I Am and Other Stories at Christmas by David Rodeback
NOTABLE READ: The Dad Who Stayed by David Rodeback