Announcing the Finalists for the 2025 Big Other Book Award for Fiction!

We’re excited to announce the finalists for the 2025 Big Other Book Award for Fiction. The winner will be announced at the 2025 Big Other Book Awards Ceremony, which will be aired virtually (date and time to be announced).

Without further ado, here are the finalists for the 2025 Big Other Book Award for Fiction:

Kurt Baumeister’s Twilight of the Gods (Stalking Horse Press)

Jesi Bender’s Child of Light (Whisk(e)y Tit)

Craig Bernardini’s 12 Oxen Under the Sea (New American Press)

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s Terry Dactyl (Coffee House Press)

Teresa Carmody’s A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others (Autofocus)

Kim Chinquee’s Contact with the Wild (Madhat Press)

Lauren Davis’s The Nothing (YesYes Books)

Alex Foster’s Circular Motion (Grove Press)

James W. Fuerst’s Distress Cries of Animals (Spaceboy Books)

David Greenwood’s The Cloud Intern (Under the BQE Press)

Caroline Hagood’s Death and Other Speculative Fictions (Spuyten Duyvil)

Brady Harrison’s A Journey to Al Ramel (Twelve Winters Press)

Norman Lock’s Eden’s Clock (Bellevue Literary Press)

Robert Lopez’s The Best People (Dzanc Books)

Madeline McDonnell’s Lonesome Ballroom (Rescue Press)

Shani Mootoo’s Starry Starry Night (Book*hug Press)

Alan Michael Parker’s Bingo Bango Boingo (Dzanc Books)

Miranda Schreiber’s Iris and the Dead (Book*hug Press)

Constance Squires’s Low April Sun (University of Oklahoma Press)

Joy Williams’s The Pelican Child (Knopf)

(Image: Roberto Matta’s Untitled (1941))

John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024) and Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press, forthcoming in 2026). His fiction is also published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, Hobart, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His poetry is also published in elimae, Sixth Finch, Contrapuntos, and elsewhere. His criticism is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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