Vote in the 2025 Futurist Letters Awards
A prize in fiction and a prize in nonfiction.
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The Futurist Letters editorial team is proud to announce open voting in our first-ever annual awards in fiction and nonfiction. All our readers are welcomed to vote for their choices in the polls at the bottom of this announcement through December 18th, 2025.
Each award is down to a runoff between four finalists nominees. These pieces, all published in Futurist in 2025, were selected by the editorial team with reader engagement taken heavily into account. Reruns, parts of larger whole works, and pieces by the staff were excluded from consideration.
An announcement will be made after voting ends to crown our two Futurist Letters Award winners. Each winner will get a cash prize of $40 USD for a little holiday cheer, plus an accolade to put in his or her literary bio for life.
If you are nominated, or if you’re not, we encourage you to share this post and get your friends to vote. These nominees also serve as a great sampler of the work we’ve been honored to acquire and hone this past year!
The eight finalists are linked below for your convenience. They are:
Fiction
“Larry Grank Saves the Kilogram” by Matt Payne
“A Riot at Red Plan-It! Park” by Lillian Wang Selonick
“Now That the Party’s Over” by Olivia McNeilis
“Kill Your Son” by Bogdan Domakha
Nonfiction
“American Evil” by Willem Doherty
“Rob the Übermensch” by Rachel Haywire
“The Last Good Man” by Mushkelji
“Criers and Kingmakers” by Rhyme Henry Davis
Find all eight below, followed by two voting modals.
Fiction:
Larry Grank Saves the Kilogram
This is a rare editorial note to tell you we are having a little meetup in Santa Monica this weekend. Would love to see you there. Enjoy the new Matt Payne! — Cairo
Now That the Party's Over
The nurse enters with a white tray. Everything about her is designed to look non-threatening: her pale yellow scrubs, her serene smile, her sweet chemoscent perfume. I’m supposed to think of vanilla ice cream or breastmilk. Here’s mother to make everything right.
Kill Your Son
God appeared to me on Sunday morning. I was standing in the kitchen and blowing on the freshly brewed coffee. You know that period when the coffee is too hot to drink, but you take a sip anyway, and instead of taste, you feel a burn? I was blowing on the coffee with my burnt mouth when a crack appeared in the air in front of me, and light poured out. I …
Nonfiction:
American Evil
This essay by Willem Doherty was the grand prize winner of the Futurist Letters Oneshotted competition, selected by EIC Cairo Smith and guest judge Katherine Dee.
Rob the Übermensch
It started at Burning Man, like every company in the Bay Area once did. It was 2004 and it was the beginning and the end of my life. The ashes of the playa were on my skin and I was tired as hell. I was squeezed between a punk and a raver in the middle row of a Ford Transit on our trip back to Reno, wanting nothing more than a bed and a shower. I could …
Criers and Kingmakers
In 1992, Cormac McCarthy—obscure and impoverished—released All the Pretty Horses. His most accessible work yet, it won him the National Book Award, the recognition of legacy media publications, and 190,000 hardcover sales. This was his ascent to the mainstream. You may understandably conclude that the reception of this award and subsequent increase in s…
The 2025 Futurist Letters Awards:
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