Faculty and Alum Longlisted for Center for Fiction's 2025 First Novel Prize; Mariam Rahmani '21 Makes the Shortlist
Update:
The shortlist for the Center for Fiction's 2025 First Novel Prize has been announced, and Liquid, a Love Story by Mariam Rahmani '21 has advanced to this next round of judging for the prestigious award.
Selected by judges Xochitl Gonzalez, Adam Haslett, Tracy O’Neill, and Joseph Earl Thomas (winner of the 2024 First Novel Prize), the shortlisted authors will each be awarded $1,000.
Gonzalez was quoted in a Literary Hub article announcing the shortlist:
“Through the First Novel Prize, it’s wonderful to be able to elevate titles that might have otherwise been overlooked. There is something for everyone on this list—but what every book holds is marvelous storytelling with the promise of even more to come in the future.”
The winner, to be announced this December, will receive $15,000 in recognition of their contribution to contemporary literature.
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Original: September 29, 2025
The longlist for the 2025 First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction includes This is the Only Kingdom by Assistant Professor of Writing Jaquira Díaz and Liquid, a Love Story by Mariam Rahmani '21.
Established in 2006, the prize is awarded each year by the Center for Fiction, a literary nonprofit organization based in Downtown Brooklyn dedicated to celebrating fiction and connecting readers and writers. This year, the 185 submissions were narrowed to the 29-book longlist by a panel of over 300 community members from the Center, including readers, writers, booksellers, and librarians.
Both debut novels deal with family, sexuality, and emotional inheritances. This is the Only Kingdom, published by Algonquin Books, is an epic story of a mother and daughter wrestling with the aftermath of a murder in their community in el Caserío, Puerto Rico. It is a heartrending portrait of a family, and a testament to mothers, daughters, and the barrios that make them. Liquid, also published by Algonquin, is an original spin on the romantic comedy: a young Muslim scholar feeling mired by academia decides to give up her career and marry rich, committing herself to 100 dates in the course of a single summer. What follows is a plethora of unique characters, an overdue familial reckoning, and a trip to Tehran that changes everything.
Born in Puerto Rico and residing in New York, Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. Her memoir, Ordinary Girls, won a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, among others. The recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from VCCA, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Kenyon Review, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, Díaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, and The Fader. Her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology.
Rahmani's fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in Granta, Gulf Coast, n+1, and elsewhere. Her first book-length translation was named Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker. Rahmani holds a PhD from UCLA and an MFA from Columbia, as well as degrees from Princeton and Oxford. Among her awards are a US Fulbright fellowship, a postdoctoral fellowship with the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Henfield Prize, the Columbia MFA’s highest honor in fiction. She currently serves on the faculty of Bennington College and on the advisory and editorial boards of Acacia, a new magazine for the Muslim left.