The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press

Pushcart Press

Pushcart Press is a publishing house established in 1972 by Bill Henderson and is perhaps most famous for its Pushcart Prize and for the anthology of prize winners it publishes annually. The press has been honored by Publishers Weekly as one of the USA's "most influential publishers" with the 1979...

 that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small press

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

es over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976. Some of the winners are nominated from this List of literary magazines.

The founding editors are Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

, Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....

, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern, Gordon Lish

Gordon Lish

Gordon Jay Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, and Richard Ford.-Early life and family:...

, Harry Smith

Harry Smith (poet)

Harry Joseph Smith is a poet, editor and essayist who divides his time between Maine and New York City.- Biography :Educated at Brown University, Smith first became known in the small press world as the editor of The Smith, a literary magazine and small press founded in the mid-1960s...

, Hugh Fox

Hugh Fox

Hugh Bernard Fox Jr. was a writer, novelist, poet and anthropologist and one of the founders of the Pushcart Prize for literature...

, Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.Reed has been described as one of the most controversial...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler

Leslie Fiedler

Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...

, Nona Balakian, Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles

Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...

, Paul Engle

Paul Engle

Paul Engle , noted American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and as founder of the International Writing Program , both at the University of Iowa.-Life:Engle is often mistakenly...

, Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison

Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...

, Reynolds Price

Reynolds Price

Reynolds Price was an American novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist and the James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. Apart from English literature, Price had a lifelong interest in ancient languages and Biblical scholarship...

, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris

Richard Morris

Richard Morris may refer to:* Richard Morris * Richard Morris * Richard Morris Welsh international footballer who played for Plymouth Argyle...

, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, and William Phillips

William Phillips

William Phillips may refer to:*William Phillips , artilleryman and general officer in the British Army who served as a major-general in the American Revolutionary War...

.

Among the writers who received early recognition in Pushcart Prize Anthologies were: Kathy Acker

Kathy Acker

Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S...

, Steven Barthelme

Steven Barthelme

Steven Barthelme is the author of numerous short stories and essays. His published works include And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story, Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss , and The Early Posthumous Work Steven Barthelme (born 1947) is the author of numerous short stories and...

, Rick Bass

Rick Bass

Rick Bass is an American writer and an environmental activist.-Life:Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, U.S., the son of a geologist, and he studied petroleum geology at Utah State University. He grew up in Houston, and started writing short stories on his lunch breaks while working as a petroleum...

, Charles Baxter, Bruce Boston

Bruce Boston

Bruce Boston is an American speculative fiction writer and poet who was born in Chicago and grew up in Southern California. He received a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, 1965, and an M.A., 1967...

, Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

, Joshua Clover

Joshua Clover

Joshua Clover is a poet, critic, journalist and author. He has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry, is a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and recipient of an individual grant from the NEA; his first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the...

, Junot Diaz

Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience...

, Andre Dubus

Andre Dubus

Andre Dubus, II was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. Dubus is recognized as one of the most prolific American short-story writers in the 20th century.-Early life and education:...

, William H. Gass

William H. Gass

William Howard Gass is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor. He has written two novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which have won National Book Critics Circle Award...

, Seán Mac Falls

Seán Mac Falls

Seán Mac Falls is an Irish poet.Belonging to no group or movement and operating outside of literary fashions, his brand of symbolist poetry can, at first reading, appear difficult. His use of allusion, startling diction and subtle punning display submerged metaphor in his work...

, William Monahan

William Monahan

William J. Monahan is an American screenwriter and novelist. His second produced screenplay was The Departed, a film which earned him a WGA award and an Academy award for Best Adapted Screenplay.-Writer and editor:...

, Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien (author)

Tim O'Brien is an American novelist who often writes about his experiences in the Vietnam War and the impact the war had on the American servicemen who fought there...

, Lance Olsen

Lance Olsen

- Biography :Lance Olsen received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison , an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop , and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia...

, Peter Orner

Peter Orner

Peter Orner is an American writer of fiction. He is the author of the novels Love and Shame and Love and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and the short story collection Esther Stories...

, Kevin Prufer

Kevin Prufer

Kevin D. Prufer is an American poet, academic, editor, and essayist. His most recent books are In A Beautiful Country and National Anthem...

, Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. Ryan was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate, from 2008 to 2010...

, Mona Simpson

Mona Simpson

Mona E. Simpson is an American author. She is a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College. She won the Whiting Prize for her first novel, Anywhere but Here...

, Ana Menéndez

Ana Menéndez

-Early life:Menéndez was born to Cuban exile parents who fled to Los Angeles, California in 1964. Menéndez's parents expected to return to Cuba at any time and prepared their children for this eventuality. As a result, Menéndez spoke only Spanish until she enrolled in kindergarten. The family...

, and Wells Tower

Wells Tower

Wells Tower is an American writer of short stories and non-fiction.-Early life, education, and early career:Tower was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, but grew up in North Carolina....

.

Winners by Year

• 2012 Pushcart XXXVI
• 2011 Pushcart XXXV Mary Beth Hughes
  Mary Beth Hughes
  Mary Beth Hughes was an American film, television, and stage actress best known for her roles in B movies.-Early life and career:...
  
   for "Double Happiness" in a Public Space
  Public space
  A public space is a social space such as a town square that is open and accessible to all, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. One of the earliest examples of public spaces are commons. For example, no fees or paid tickets are required for entry, nor are the entrants...
  
  ; Elliott Holt for "Fem Care" in The Kenyon Review
  The Kenyon Review
  The Kenyon Review is a Literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, USA, home of Kenyon College. The Review was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959...
  
  ; Cheryl Strayed
  Cheryl Strayed
  Cheryl Strayed is a novelist and essayist living in Portland, Oregon. Her debut novel, TORCH, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2006...
  
   for "Munroe Country" in the Missouri Review; Alan Shapiro
  Alan Shapiro
  Alan Shapiro is an American poet and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of nine poetry books, including Tantalus in Love, Song and Dance, and The Dead Alive and Busy. He received the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Los Angeles...
  
  's "Indoor Municipal Pool" in the New Ohio Review; Sarah Einstein for "Mot" in Ninth Letter; Martin Moran for "Analphabet", Brigit Pegeen Kelly
  Brigit Pegeen Kelly
  Brigit Pegeen Kelly is an award-winning American poet.-Life:She is married to , a poet and fiction writer.She taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, and Warren Wilson College....
  
   for "Rome", L.S. Asekoff for "Hither & Yon," all from Ploughshares
  Ploughshares
  Ploughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
  
  
• 2010 Pushcart XXXIV Ashlee Crews for "Birdfeed" in McSweeney's
  McSweeney's
  McSweeney's is an American publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers.Apart from its book list, McSweeney's is responsible for four regular publications: the quarterly literary journal,...
  
  
• 2009 Pushcart XXXIII
• 2008 Pushcart XXXII
• 2007 Pushcart XXXI
• 2006 Pushcart XXX
• 2005 Pushcart XXIX
• 2004 Pushcart XXVIII
• 2003 Pushcart XXVII
• 2002 Pushcart XXVI
• 2001 Pushcart XXV