The literary magazine and publisher McSweeney’s has announced the winner of the 2026 Gabe Hudson Prize, awarded annually to “a writer’s second book-length work of fiction that embodies the spirit of Gabe’s work and showcases humor, pathos, and a deep understanding of contemporary America.”
This year’s winner is Patricia Lockwood for Will There Ever Be Another You, her novel about a young woman trying to keep her life together after becoming ill during a global pandemic. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “There is only one Patricia Lockwood, and this surreal, silly, and sneakily profound book could only be hers.”
In an Instagram post, McSweeney’s shared a citation from the prize jury, chaired by novelist Akhil Sharma: “Sentences and passages flash us with beauty or leave us reeling with laughter. There is so much pain in the book and yet there is no self-pity, instead there is a marvelous self-awareness as to how ridiculous it is to be human.”
The Gabe Hudson Prize, which comes with a $10,000 cash award, is named after the McSweeney’s editor and author (Gork, the Teenage Dragon) who died in 2023 at age 52. The prize’s previous winners are Ayana Mathis for The Unsettled and Kate Greathead for The Book of George.
Lockwood told the Associated Press that while she never met Hudson, she relates to him, saying, “He was a truly generous literary citizen with a rich trajectory: a writer of funny, gut-punching stories, an inventive novelist, a cheerleader for others. He was a Marine, like my brother, and a teacher in South Korea, in the same neighborhood where my husband grew up.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
