The 2026 Coppice Prize is opening on March 1!

The Coppice Prize is an annual short story competition run by the Redbud Writing Project. Every year, we invite writers around the world to submit a short story, up to 4000 words, for consideration. Past judges include Raf Frumkin, Aamina Ahmad, Anise Vance, Kelly Link, Clare Beams, Joanna Pearson, John Kessel, Makenna Goodman, Beth Morgan, Alison B. Hart, and Jill McCorkle. Winners receive a cash prize and publication in our Coppice Prize anthology.

In 2026, the Coppice Prize will be open from March 1-March 31. As in 2025, the contest will have a special focus on uplifting marginalized and under-represented writers. Here’s what that means:

• The contest is open to writers who identify as belonging to marginalized or under-represented groups (e.g. cultural identity, income level of your family, racial identity, gender identity, disability, or something else). We will leave it up to individual contestants to decide if they identify as marginalized or under-represented. If you’d like to talk this out with us, please feel free to reach out.

• As always, the contest is free to enter.

• Winners and the finalist receive review and feedback from a literary agent. Winners also receive $600 (first place), $300 (second place) and $100 (third place).

This contest is made possible thanks to a generous grant from United Arts!

Coaching sessions

Not sure how to prepare your submission for the contest? Not sure what a writing contest really is?

This year, we’re offering two coaching sessions, open to anyone interested in the contest, where we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of writing contests and share best practices for making your story the best it can be. We’ll provide you with some exercises and answer any questions you have about the Coppice Prize or contests in general.

The first coaching session took place on Saturday, February 7, 2026, online.

The second coaching session will take place on Saturday, February 21 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at RUMAH (415 Hillsborough St Suite 101, Raleigh, NC 27603). Register here.

Judges

Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and now lives in the United States. Her debut poetry collection, Hard Damage, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Whiting Award. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and graduate student at USC, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, The Yale Review, Granta, and elsewhere. Raised speaking Farsi and German, she writes in her third language, English. She serves as the poetry editor of Amulet, as a contributing editor at The Yale Review, and works as an assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of Vermont. Aber divides her time between Vermont and Brooklyn.

Her first novel GOOD GIRL was published by Hogarth (US) and Bloomsbury (UK) in 2025, and will be translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Japanese, and Turkish.

Mac Crane is a jock, sweatpants enthusiast, and the award-winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, A Sharp Endless Need, and the forthcoming short story collection, Perverts. They have received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, American Short Fiction, and Vermont Studio Center, and their short work has appeared in Literary Hub, The Sun, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere. Originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania, they currently live in San Diego with their wife and two kids.

Why did we decide to revamp the contest?

Oftentimes, the people who have the most access to the arts are the ones who need them the least. The arts are an incredible source of catharsis, healing, and empowerment, but too often, they are restricted to those who already hail from highly educated, upper middle class backgrounds. We've seen over and over again how our classes specifically serving writers who hail from marginalized communities have transformed those writers: our students have regularly told us that our classes have changed their lives. 

Having a deadline in the form of a contest, as well as an opportunity to win a cash prize and publication, is often incredibly motivating for writers. We believe that offering this contest, as well as the training sessions, galvanizes writers from this community and brings them further into the world of creative writing. In addition, this contest gave ten finalists the opportunity to have their work reviewed by nationally renowned judges, and three winners the opportunity to see their work published, share it with the public, and receive feedback from a literary agent. The publishing industry is still incredibly wealthy and white, and we're incredibly excited about the possibility of giving three marginalized writers the chance to launch a career.