We are thrilled to announce the 2023 Electric Book Award Longlist! From more than 800 manuscripts of all types, lengths, styles, and genres submitted to Alternating Current Press for the book prize, we’ve narrowed the first round of reading down to this longlist of semifinalists. Congrats to all of these authors, whose manuscripts will now go on to the next round of readers to create a shortlist. From the shortlist, we’ll then select a winner to receive $1,000 and publication, and possibly several finalists who may also be offered publication to join our 2024 through 2026 publishing seasons. Congrats to these longlisters, and we’ll see you in the next round!

Novels

• Leisure Living by John Kaufmann
• The Infinite Monkey Theorem by Nancy Roach
• Under Point Betsie’s Light by Merry Elrick
• Coyote by Robin Knight
• Chicago Motion by Keith Zengel
• Future Ghosts of Pittsburgh by Racheal Fest
• The Seachamber by D. W. White
• Birds of Passage by Miriam Polli
• Rush by David Powell
• The Weary Carry On by Bowman Wilker
• Mulligan by Joe Kapitan
• My Mom Used to Walk to the Dairy Queen by James Callan
• The Warehouse by Jacob Austin
• The Body Electric by J. David Liss
• Bull and Vine by Hunter Sheaffer

Novellas

• Peninsula by Paul Luckhart
• The Florida Shuffle by James McAdams

Short-Story Collections

• The Divide by Evan Morgan Williams
• Anachronisms by Bob Thomas
• Katy Perry, Pray for Us by Geoff Wyss
• Klamath Falls by Adam Reger
• Intimacy Issues by Lukas Tallent
• We’ll All Be Gone So Soon by Timothy Boudreau
• The Lesser Madonnas by Andrew Rooney
• Palmetto Bugs, Cabbage Tea, & Obituaries for Breakfast by R. P. Singletary
• Strange Beasts by Eric Notaro
• Children of Sons by Cameron Green
• Sister Light-of-Love Love Dove by Judith Cooper
• Please Don’t Feed the Philosophers by Andrew Gretes
• Sleep Decades by Israel Bonilla
• Oh If We Could Only Know by Michelle Herman
• Pack by Jeff Wallace
• You’ve Got a Problem by Linda Lenhoff
• Sweet Things: 60 Flashes in the Dark by Bruce Meyer
• Dream Jobs & True Callings by Joe Davies
• In the Garden City by Mark Cassidy
• Don’t Take This the Wrong Way by Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross
• I Am Here by Shawn Rubenfeld
• Cripple Creek by Amy Foster Myer
• Fightpickers by Curtis VanDonkelaar
• A Valley Famous by James Gyure
• Weathered by Marsha Timblin
• Wild Blue Yonder by Andrew MacQuarrie
• Movies Are Fine for a Bright Boy Like You by Andrew Farkas

Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir

• Charms for a Mortal World by Keygan Sands
• Crazy Talk by Laurie Uttich
• Isn’t It Fun How We Shine: A Neighborhood Memoir of the Great Recession by Michael Downs
• Nothing Is Given So Freely by Jennie Berner
• Behold the Men: A Lament for Our Toxicity by Andrew Altschul
• The Ecology Cure by Wendy Johnson
• Old Fiddle by Patricia Henley

Poetry

• Catastrophic States of Water by Emily MacGriff
• Learning How to Drown by S. M. Stubbs
• Orphan’s Antonym by Jennifer Brown
• Lake by Jeff Fearnside
• To Those Who Don’t Remember by Jade Hidle
• Last Known Address by Jane Medved
• Luckstone by Melissa Helton
• Against the Risen Flesh by Randy Koch
• Long Divisions by Catherine Fletcher
• There Is a Corner of Someplace Else by Camden Michael Jones
• Emigrant from an Imagined Country by James Wyshynski
• Once I Was Adored by Candace Hennekens
• Reflections of a Feral Mother by Cynthia Robinson Young
• My Body Is a Better Poet than Me by Kaleigh O’Keefe
• Grateful for 2020 by Cathy Fynn and Trent Pomeroy
• Dusa: A Translation of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The White Man’s Burden’ by Christine Imperial
• In the Wake of the Patriarchs by Cody Kucker
• Every Good Thing by Annie Anzalone
• Magpie’s Museum of the Murderous & Miraculous by Thomas McGuire
• Ancient Spells to Conjure a Modern Ghost by Jacqueline Viola Moulton
• The Divining of Equity by Jonny Pérez
• The Best Bad Idea You’ve Had in Months by Bree A. Rolfe
• What Passes for Death by George Perreault
• Symptomatic of the Make Believe by Amy Bobeda
• A Petit Mal by Ana Maria Caballero

Hybrid

• In Case of Emergency by Danielle Zaccagnino, et al.
• Reliance by Julia Tagliere
• Americano by Ryan Walker
• Childish Things by Evan Lavender-Smith
• Specimens: True and Un-Altered Notes on an Inadvertent Adventure of an Unusual Nature, the Which Contains Sorrow, Death, Danger, Art, and Great Happiness by Rosanne Daryl Thomas

Thanks to these authors for sharing their incredible work with us and for trusting us to share it with the rest of the world. Congratulations on the longlist selections, and we wish you the best of luck in the next round.

For the visually impaired or those using TTS reading aids: this is the end of the announcement.

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