It was Iskra’s first day on the job, and Miles, the owner of Three Rivers Pharmacy, was giving her a tour of the register.
“Smaller bills go here,” he said, indicating the slots for ones, fives, tens, twenties, and fifties, “but Benjamins go underneath.” He lifted the cash tray. “Not that we get many in this neighborhood.”
“Benjamins?” Iskra said.
“Hundreds.”
By ADMIR SKODO
After three outbursts of fury at work, my supervisor told me I had to see a counselor or face serious disciplinary action. Or worse. Worse, worse what? Lose my job? Police involvement? I don’t know, because it never got to that. “Lucky, you’re lucky. This time.”
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
Snails
It is 1971. Civil war has spread from the cities of East Pakistan into the countryside. Thirty miles south of the port city of Chittagong, a chill has settled over Manpur, where men and boys of different faiths gather after dusk in secret, segregated groups.
Ajoy, seventeen, sits with a Buddhist cabal in his cousin Tunu’s house. Tunu adds to the night’s rumors. The Hindus are getting it, he says. Muslims are taking furniture, radios, clothes. Suren Mitra, a Hindu businessman, has shot two looters and is trying to escape to India through the Bandarban hills.
“But listen,” another boy says. “The Muslims may not get him, but the Kukis in the Hill Tracts—”
He doesn’t finish. Everyone has heard about the naked Kukis. The talk trails off. Voices grow drowsy. In the stillness, they hear the distant boom of a Pakistani warship shelling the port of Chittagong.
At home, Ajoy’s mother kneels before a framed picture of the Buddha on the plastered mud wall of their bedroom. A candle flickers; shadows dance around the orange halo. She recites Pali sutras. Ajoy lights incense and kneels beside her.
His brother Bijan has not come home for two nights.
By VALER POPA
An excerpt from Moon Over Bucharest, a finalist for the 2026 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.
He was led by the apostle into a valley shut in between two hills, where everything that is lost on earth (be the fault of ours or that of time or fate) fetches up miraculously
— Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, Canto 34)
Of course, the Favorit Cinema was closed. It had kept mute vigil behind our building for nearly thirty years—ever since some overzealous tycoon bought it shortly after the revolution, hoping to turn the place into a nightclub; ever since he went bankrupt, fired the staff, and locked the doors with a chain so massive and medieval that even now, people often wonder how such a bulky thing could still be manufactured.
1
The hyena boys came to Bonaventure, which was serendipitous, because he was used to avoiding the world before the world spurned him. For one, his white albino skin flecked with dark spots made him a regular target of mockery. When Bonaventure was younger and his father was around and could barely afford to send him to school, his peers often taunted him to come outside in the midday heat. They dared him to come to the playground without squinting, one palm raised to block stray sunlight. They likened him to a pillar of butter melting in the sun. They asked if he was a vampire banished to the shadows.
Things have taken a strange turn since my husband uprooted our family. First I quit my job. Then I stopped eating. And now I’ve begun to receive messages from the dead.
Four months ago, we moved from rural, pastoral Northern California, a place I loved, to southwest Virginia. Over the summer, smoke from the West Coast wildfires has followed us, traveling east across the country, shrouding the Blue Ridge Mountains in a haze made heavier by humidity. I like to look out the window, air purifiers humming behind me, and watch the microscopic remnants of home suspended in air, thinking they’ve been sent here just for me.
On a rainy morning in late August last year, I stood beneath a wedding-sized tent to observe the Sixth Opening Convocation of the West Virginia School of Home Economics. It was a humid day, and the smell of wet, freshly cut grass mingled with the perfumes of the young women who surrounded me. I was a guest of Sophia Chafin, keynote alumna speaker. She sat on a small wooden stage with her six-year-old daughter, Riley; her two-year-old son, Taylor Jr.; and her husband, Representative Taylor Chafin. Sophia, clad in a floral dress, held Taylor’s hand as the school’s co-founder, Andrea Armstrong, introduced her, describing her as “one of WVSHE’s greatest success stories.”
It’s minus forty outside, and on Baba Lena’s glassed-in balcony the towels have dried stiff and I stand them up on the couch like snow cranes flying north and breathe in their frozen freshness. On a warm winter day of minus twenty Celsius, we could go buy ice cream. Rita wanted to come to Baba Lena’s too, but she is in the hospital. When we have a cold, mama makes us breathe hot steam from boiled potatoes, but Rita leaned too close and scalded her throat and her voice is gone and it hurts so much she can’t even swallow.
I would happily trade places with her if I could have Aleksey as my best friend.
1910
Ida Smith lived on a large farm near the south shore of Lake Erie, a lake she believed was the ocean when she was very young, because the shore was sand and all she could see was water and water and she didn’t yet know the sea smelled like salt.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.