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.
Excerpted from The Conviction of Things Not Seen, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.
The cemetery had inhabitants, and not just those whose descendants had laid them to rest. Two old men were living on the Ordoñez plot. Next to the abandoned Llora mausoleum, a family of four had pitched their makeshift tent. As more squatters crept in, to whom the administrators of the Cementerio de Manila turned a blind eye, a village of sorts arose, keeping watch over the stones of the dead, sweeping fallen leaves from their graves and removing flowers that had wilted and browned in the tropical sun. Thus they styled themselves caretakers of the graves, inspiring even greater tolerance for their presence among those in charge, such that far from brusquely restricting their movements, the guards at the gate greeted them by name and allowed them free access and egress without much resistance. The crypt of the Romulo family even hosted a sari-sari store for the cemetery’s living inhabitants, and some cunning member of the community had taken the key to the public restroom for safekeeping at the store, under the watchful eye of a gray-haired woman affectionately known as Tandang Cora—a joke entirely lost on foreign visitors who, in any case, were few.
Excerpted from The Church of Mastery, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025
Or, to use some expressions which are nearest the heart of the Masters, it is necessary for the archer to become, in spite of himself, an unmoved center. Then comes the supreme and ultimate miracle: art becoming “artless,” shooting becomes not-shooting, a shooting without bow and arrow; the teacher becomes a pupil again, the Master a beginner, the end a beginning, and the beginning perfection.
—Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery
Given all their invisible stresses, all their accumulated ambitions, and the narrowness of their paths, the Freedom Riders in Pursuit of Veracity agreed they needed to relax to prepare for their journey down South; relaxation is not a luxury, it is a requirement. America has a problem with Black people relaxing. Or behaving like a boss. That’s why William would spend an entire day now and again by himself like Jesus in the wilderness. He’d meander through the weirdest stacks of a downtown bookstore just to wander. Who knows what Language was destined to change you? That’s why he took up cricket with René from Port of Spain. Why he’d take Rowena out to restaurants they could not afford to order dishes he could not pronounce—spine straight, risking glares.
Excerpted from Drownproofing and Other Stories, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.
Dr. Rafael Améndarez
San Francisco, California, United States of America
July 14, 1968
Srita. Liliam Améndarez
San Salvador, El Salvador, Central America
Greetings my always dear cousin, Lili!
Last week I was discharged from the hospital, and considering my life’s current hustle and bustle, just in case, I’ve decided to congratulate you in advance for your birthday. Congratulations a thousand times on that auspicious August 9.
A few days ago, by accident, I came across a letter among old and musty papers. One of those things one keeps without knowing why. Things that are stored away after reading them and are not read again until that day when unexpectedly, by chance, they appear in our hands. Imagine a letter written a whopping two decades ago! Yellowed by the years. A letter from a friend. This one dates back to World War II.
At that time, I was in France with the American army. I remember it was a freezing day, bitterly cold, in January 1944. There in the French Vosges, between Colmar and Strasbourg. That winter I remember vividly because it was extremely harsh. A man could be wounded and freeze within minutes. Climbing a mountain loaded with winter clothing, weapons, and ammunition, one would sweat, and that sweat running down the face, sliding, in a moment when one stopped to catch their breath, froze into ice splinters, which could be peeled off.
Excerpted from Jaguar, a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing 2025.
It was hard to stand out in the family alone. Benito’s parents, tías and tíos, valued children more than they valued money. They valued mothers more than they did models. When a man in the family became a father, he might as well have become a judge, or a reverend. You could be an arsonist, a seasoned gangster. You could even have slept with the priest. But if you became a parent, you would be alright in their eyes.
Tío Esteban was forty-one when he went to prison again. And Tía was older: forty-five. It didn’t seem likely that they would become parents, so all faith in them was lost.
This year, 2025, marks the tenth anniversary of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, which supports immigrant writers whose work examines how immigration shapes our lives, our communities, and our world. In honor of the anniversary, Restless Books’ unstintingly generous board member, Steven G. Kellman—whose grandparents were immigrants to the United States—has endowed the prize so that it may continue in perpetuity. As ICE and federal agents invade our cities, we hope the newly named Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature can serve as a reminder that immigrants’ voices deserve to be heard. Anyone familiar with history knows that immigrants have always been the gravitational center of the extraordinary American experiment.
Of course, freedom is not only under siege in America, but all across the globe. As autocrats deny the rights of people in Palestine, in Sudan, in Ukraine to remain on their own land, forced displacement is happening everywhere.
The 2025 Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature was judged by Dinaw Mengestu, Rajiv Mohabir, and Ilan Stavans; the winner will be announced by LitHub on December 2. Please join us in celebrating the work of the following four finalists, and in holding up the power of immigrant stories to remind us of our common humanity. No one is free until all of us are free.
— Restless Books
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