Graywolf, One Story and The Porch Win $250,000 Each

The Literary Arts Fund named Graywolf Press, One Story, and The Porch Writers' Collective the first winners of its Stylus Prize on 10 November 2026, and each will receive an unrestricted $250,000, the fund announced from New York. The three awards come to $750,000, the same release says. Writers across the United States nominated the groups, anonymously. The fund made the final choices. It calls Stylus the first prize of its kind for literary nonprofits that help writers make new work and reach readers.

Stylus is a writing instrument.

Writers recommended the winners, the announcement says, and the winners help ensure the future is written.

Jen Benka is the fund's executive director. "Literary arts nonprofits make great writing possible," she said.

The Porch, Nashville

The Porch Writers' Collective is in Nashville. Susannah Felts and Katie McDougall, two teachers and published writers who did not know each other, started it after moving back to their hometown, the announcement says. Felts began with informal workshops at home and in a coffee shop. The Porch dates the classes to 2014, the release says.

Last year The Porch hosted 170 adult workshops in creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, led by 200 authors, and those workshops served 5,000 people, the announcement says. It also runs retreats in Tennessee and a visiting-writers series. The announcement names MacArthur Fellow Kiese Laymon and former U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón among the writers who have met readers there.

Two years ago The Porch started a journal, SWING. Authors who publish in it, give readings, or teach are paid, the release says. The Porch is the only organization of its kind in Nashville and one of the largest literary groups in the Southeast, the same release said. In 2027 it plans to move into a larger space, the release says.

Felts and McDougall said: "We are grateful to the Literary Arts Fund for its vital work in bolstering the literary arts field and creating opportunities for recognition." The announcement printed that.

A writer nominating The Porch called it "The gold standard of community service through literature."

One Story, Brooklyn

One Story began in 2002, after Maribeth Batcha and Hannah Tinti watched small journals fold and worried the short story would be harder for a new writer to place, the announcement says. Each issue is one story, what the release calls "an unfussy 5 x 7 chapbook", mailed to subscribers. A writer appears once.

Since that first issue, One Story has distributed more than 2.5 million copies, the announcement says. It reaches close to 6,000 readers a month and has published more than 340 stories by upwards of 340 writers, the release says. The release names 'Pemi Aguda, Lauren Groff, Min Jin Lee, Achy Obejas, Ann Patchett, and Paul Yoon. Many of those stories have won O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, the same release said.

In the announcement, Batcha and Tinti put it this way: "Twenty-five years ago, we started One Story with $3,000, printing and mailing our one-story-at-a-time format to readers from our apartments." The magazine will be 25 in 2027, the release says. One nominating writer called it "One of the greatest short story institutions in this country."

It serves over 1,400 writers a year with reading groups, write-ins, classes, and workshops, and it publishes teen work in One Teen Story, the release says.

Graywolf, Minneapolis

Graywolf Press, in Minneapolis, is described as past its 50+ years, the announcement says. Scott Walker started it in Port Townsend, Washington, in 1974, printing poetry chapbooks on a letterpress and sewing the bindings by hand, the release says. The press moved to the Midwest in 1984, the release says. Fiona McCrae took over in 1994 and widened the list to fiction, nonfiction, and books that bend genre, the release says. In 2022 Carmen Giménez, a poet who had founded a small press of her own, became executive director and publisher, the release says.

Taiwan Travelogue, by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, won the National Book Award in 2024 and the International Booker Prize in 2026, the announcement says. The release also names Percival Everett, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Diane Seuss, and Tracy K. Smith among writers the press has stayed with.

Giménez said: "We are tremendously grateful to the Literary Arts Fund for awarding Graywolf an inaugural Stylus Prize, and it's particularly meaningful to us that we were nominated by authors." The announcement printed that. A nominating writer called Graywolf "One of the nation's most esteemed independent presses."

Who is paying for the prize

The fund launched in 2025 and says it will provide at least $50 million for nonprofit publishers, presenters, and groups that serve writers and their readers, the announcement says. It is a fiscally sponsored project of the National Center for Civic Innovation. The Mellon Foundation started it with the Ford Foundation, the Hawthornden Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, and an anonymous foundation.

The release says literary nonprofits now receive the least arts and culture funding from private philanthropy. The Stylus checks are unrestricted. Each house, magazine, and workshop can spend the $250,000 on the work it already does, the release says.