Prizing an Unpublished Manuscript: The Novel Prize, Editorial Consecration, and Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow

The Novel Prize is a biennial award for an unpublished fiction manuscript written in English, launched in 2020 by Giramondo Publishing in Sydney, Fitzcarraldo Editions in London, and New Directions in New York City. The winning submission receives US$10,000 as an advance against royalties and simultaneous publication by the three organizing publishers. This article critiques the literary presentation of the prize as a branding strategy, through an extended consideration of the international reception of its inaugural winner, Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow (2022a) . We supplement our theoretical approach to the Novel Prize by analyzing how international reviews of Cold Enough for Snow reproduce the self-fashioning of the prize. While the Novel Prize distances itself from the perceptions of mainstream appeal that mark traditional literary awards, it nevertheless looks to exploit the same potential for symbolic and economic profits that awards provide. Firstly, as an unpublished manuscript competition presented as a literary award, the consecration and visibility that comes with winning an award is collapsed into a novel’s publication. Secondly, the in-house awarding of the literary prize is a means for the editors to assert their own power of consecration in the conglomerate era. Finally, the international reception of Cold Enough for Snow demonstrates how effectively the strategic literariness and internationalism of the Novel Prize was adopted by reviewers.