The finalists are in for the 2025 Westport Prize for Literature, a fiction award in its third year. The three novels chosen to compete for the prize of $10,000 and a “Meet the Author” night in the fall:

• The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole, about woman from Nigeria whose new life in New Orleans in upended by a hurricane that threatens to devastate the city.
• O Sinners! by Nicole Cuffy, about a journalist who embeds himself in a cult in the California redwoods and is forced to come to terms with painful memories while struggling to resist the enigmatic cult leader’s spell.
• Rabbit Moon by Jennifer Haigh, about a divorced couple confronting their past as they wait by the bedside of their critically injured daughter in a Shanghai hospital.

“Once again this year the community response to this project has been fantastic!” said Candice Savin, selectwoman and chair of the Westport Prize for Literature steering committee. “I am so pleased with the quality of the submissions this year. The prize is attracting impressive literary talent.”

The winner will be chosen in August or early September. The “Meet the Author” ceremony will be held at 7:00 p.m. Nov. 6, 2025, at the Westport Library. The evening will feature a conversation between the winning novelist and author Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review.

Savin, a local politician, real estate attorney and avid bibliophile, spearheaded the creation of the prize in 2023 after considering the idea for years. Drawing on Westport’s many authors and other figures in the literary scene, she is striving to expand the prize’s prestige into a marquee accolade such as the National Book Award or the PEN America Literary Awards.

She partnered with the Westport Library in establishing the prize, which was first given to best-selling British author Zadie Smith for her novel The Fraud. About 300 residents came to the Meet the Author night with Smith, Savin said.

Since then, the award process has been further developed, with a steering committee, a team of volunteer readers and a panel of judges to choose the winner. Last year’s winner was Alejandro Puyana for his debut novel, Freedom is a Feast.

“We saw a good number of submissions for the second year,” Savin said. “It was even better this year in terms of applications.”

She said about 20 novels had been entered in the 2025 contest.

Entrants also pay a $100 entry fee. To be eligible, a book must be published in 2025, whether it was released after January 1 or is scheduled to go on sale by December 31.

“We reach out to a selective group of publishers and we’re growing it each year,” Savin said. They include major publishing companies and “one or two” independent publishers, she said.

The finalists are chosen by a team of volunteer readers that numbered close to 50 this year. The $10,000 prize that comes with the award is funded largely by private donations. 

The jurors who will choose the winner are playwright and author Tommy Greenwald, book blogger and aggregator Suzanne Leopold, publishing industry veteran Erica Melnichok, The Lifeboat author Charlotte Rogan, and nonfiction writer and former Book of the Month Club judge Nina Sankovitch.

Savin said volunteer readers are always needed. People in Westport interested in becoming a reader, submitting a novel or learning more about the prize can visit: http://westportlibrary.org/westport-prize-for-literature.

The Westport Library
20 Jesup Road
Westport, CT 06880
(203) 291-4800

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