For a number of years, publishing has been dominated by commercial fiction. Literary fiction novels and short story collections by small presses or independent authors have little chance of being noticed by reviewers or placed on bookstore shelves.  Even the literary fiction written by relatively well-known writers published by big houses has been pushed to the side by pseudo-literary fiction  — written and reviewed by those who don’t know the difference between thought and sentimentality, poetry and the use of adjectives — such that the meaning of “literary” is lost. With the way the publishing system is currently organized, books aren’t given much time in front of judges and audiences. Those that don’t make it immediately are tossed in the remaindered bin. A deep pity, as literary fiction is slow-growing and takes time to find its audience. No one in the literary fiction community denies this, and yet there are no awards for the best five-year-old novel; no reviewers interested in what came out last year. To help remedy this situation, Dactyl Foundation has created this review dedicated solely to literary fiction and is offering a $1000 award to eligible authors.

In order for a work to be considered for the award, a published literary fiction author must write a review of the work and submit it to Dactyl Review. (Instructions for submitting reviews can be found here. If you would like to offer a free copy of your book for review, click here.)  Once a review has been submitted and accepted, the author can send a request for consideration to the Review editor: info (at) dactyl (dot) org.  We also ask that all authors being considered for the Dactyl Foundation Literary Award contribute at least one review to Dactyl Review.

All works eligible for the award must be published in some form, whether through a traditional publishing house, self-published, print-on-demand, or e-book. The work must be available for purchase through a bookstore, either as new or as used. No single short stories are eligible for consideration. Short stories must appear in a collection.

Award Recipients:

2010 Shadowplay by Norman Lock

2011 no award given due to insufficient qualifying entries.