From the desk.
Short list announced for 2026 Kenneth Patchen Award for the Innovative Novel
Hi everyone,
After long delays, many of which were unforeseeable, we have winnowed down the submissions to a short list of nine manuscripts. The manuscripts in the short list are numbers 0331, 0428, 0923, 1549, 2049, 6519, 7227, 8265, and 9308.
This was a very difficult selection to make. Almost all of the manuscripts were written with care by authors who obviously have skills. I wish we could published at least two dozen of these, but we are very limited in what we can do. So unfortunately, we can only publish the one winner.
As Jack Kerouac famously wrote in his 1957 Biographical Resume, "“I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now, and the attacks are coming in thick. A lot of people are mad and jealous and bitter and I only hope they also can be heard by an expanding publishing program the size of Russia's. Because it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell [their] full life confession and tell it [THEIR] OWN WAY and then we'd have something to read in our old age, instead of the hesitations and cavilings of 'men of letters' with blear faces who only alter words that the Angel brought them.”
I do wish those of you who were not shortlisted to keep pursuing other possibilities for publication. Your work is exceptional. I guess it must be if you found us. Forget about the big five publishers. They have abandoned literature entirely and only care about selling widgets. Look to those publishers who still care about the quality of work they publish. That is where your work belongs.
Maybe our paths will cross again someday, perhaps for another book. Meanwhile, I wish you all great success.
The short list is not in the hands of the final judge, who is reading them blind. That is why none of your names are identified here. We have looked through your work anonymously and can only react to what is actually on the page. That seems the fairest approach.
Best wishes to you all,
Eckhard Gerdes
Editor and Publisher, JEF Books
The Journal of Experimental Fiction