Restless Books is honored to hold the eleventh year of what is now known as the Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature. By seeking outstanding work by immigrant writers, the prize amplifies immigrant voices and invites readers to contemplate the myriad ways in which migration shapes our lives, vitalizes our communities, and connects our world.
The 2026 Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature was judged by Terry Hong, Ilan Stavans, and Anderson Tepper; the winner will be announced by LitHub on December 1. Please join us in celebrating the work of the following four finalists, and in holding up the power of immigrant stories to speak to our shared humanity.
— Restless Books
Between Two Rivers: Stories by Dibakar Barua
Set primarily in Bangladesh, the characters in Between Two Rivers come from immigrant and diasporic communities long shaped by war, migration, memory, religion, and social displacement. Their stories explore the emotional and historical aftermath of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, communal tensions, sexuality, family estrangement, spiritual longing, and the unstable nature of belonging across generations.
Read the excerpt here.
I’d Rather Be Here by Bergita Bugarija
The ten stories in I’d Rather Be Here follow characters caught between Croatian and American culture, communism and capitalism, loyalty and desire. These women, men, and children care deeply, take risks, test their values in practice, pursue fame and power, uphold ideals, give into petty pleasures, and renounce religion only to replace it with worship of pop culture and art. Their feelings on home, success, family, and love are always in flux, shifting the way they see themselves and relate to others. They long to flee, flip the script, change lanes—only to find, as they live the consequences of staying or leaving, that escape is an illusion and life not a task to optimize but an ever-evolving mystery to embrace.
Read the excerpt here.
Moon Over Bucharest by Valer Popa
Beginning twenty-four years after the fall of Ceausescu’s dictatorship, Moon Over Bucharest charts Romania’s volatile history through the latter half of the twentieth century. When a feckless young accountant becomes fascinated by Mrs. Irina Enescu, his reclusive upstairs neighbor, his life begins to disintegrate—he retreats into his imagination, envisioning Irina’s life through the Second World War, shaped by the country’s political troubles. How did she fill in the holes left by so many cataclysms? How do we commune with those on the other side of changes and upheavals? And what is the role of invention when reconstructing narratives that have been lost in the process?
Read the excerpt here.
Comedy and Slaughter: Stories by Admir Skodo
An interconnected collection, Comedy and Slaughter explores what happens to people when circumstances reveal their lives and identities to be about as sturdy as a paper bag set on fire—particularly for working-class Bosnian refugees who have settled in California and Sweden. Echoes of the magical and otherworldly dot the landscape of their doings, guiding them in subtle and not so subtle ways. Their doings are occasionally absurd or tragic, and often offer moments of self-discovery that mark the condition of broken people trying to reassemble themselves.
Read the excerpt here.
