Julia Elliott Awarded $150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for 'Hellions' (Exclusive)
Julia Elliott Awarded $150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for 'Hellions' (Exclusive)
Shyla WatsonTue, June 2, 2026 at 11:30 PM UTC
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Julia Elliott; Hellions
Credit: Forrest Clonts; Tin House
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Julia Elliott has been named the winner of the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Her short story collection, Hellions, blends Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fantasy with themes of human folly and bodily realism
Elliott will receive $150,000 and a residency at Fogo Island Inn, while four finalists receive $12,500 each
Julia Elliott has won the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions.
Published by Tin House in April 2025, the collection contains stories featuring a medieval nun who works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, a rural South Carolina girl who gains powers amidst a growing obsession with The Exorcist, a college student and sorceress who resists a tyrannical shape-shifting professor, among others.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls," said the prize's voting jury in a press release shared with PEOPLE. "Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic."
'Hellions: Stories' by Julia Elliott
Credit: Tin House
Describing Hellions as similar to the works of Angela Carter, Dorothy Allison, Gloria Naylor and Kelly Link, they added, "There’s folklore in these stories, and Southern gothic horror, and surrealism, and fantasy, and, at their center, a thread of uneasy, bodily realism."
"But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control; Elliott is a gifted and thrilling writer,” the statement concludes.
Julia Elliott
Credit: Tin House
Elliott, a professor at the University of South Carolina and author of The Wildsand The New and Improved Romie Futch, will receive $150,000 and a stay at Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
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Each of four finalists will receive $12,500.
The 2026 works nominated for the shortlist were The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Cannon by Lee Lai, A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar and Lion by Sonya Walger.
Named after the Pulitzer-Prize-winning American-Canadian author of The Stone Diaries, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is "the first major English-language literary award to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in the United States and Canada," per a press release.
Eligible works include novels, short story collections and graphic novels, including translations, written by women and non-binary authors.
The foundation also provides scholarships and other financial assistance to women and non-binary writers, as well as offers "mentoring programs, salons and residencies for the benefit of women writers and the general public."
Past winners of the prize include Fatimah Asghar for the novel When We Were Sisters, V.V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night and Canisia Lubrin for Cold Noir.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
