Spivey Named Finalist for $20,000 DAG Prize for Literature
Jefferey Spivey MFA '26 is a finalist for the 2026 DAG Prize for Literature.
The DAG Foundation has announced the seven finalists for the DAG Prize for Literature, which grants $20,000 to “an early-career prose writer whose work expands the possibilities for American writing.” The prize, now in its second year, is given by musicians Alyssa and Douglas Graham (who also award annual prizes to musicians and visual artists), and seeks to champion “significant innovation,” and support the second prose project of an under-recognized writer.
The seven finalists were chosen from a pool of 220 applications.
Jefferey Spivey MFA '26 is a St. Louis-based author, poet, and journalist and serves as Editor at Northstar Publishing. His debut story collection, The Birthright of Sons, won the 2023 Iron Horse Book Prize and was longlisted for the 2024 Maya Angelou Book Award. He’s a current MFA candidate in Bennington College’s Writing Seminars, graduating in June 2026. His work has appeared in Rigorous, Evergreen Review, and Typehouse. His novel-in-progress, Fatherwife, is a hybrid work of fiction and poetry that explores loneliness and desire, with a Black queer lens and a pop culture fixation—along two parallel narrative tracks. The “traditional” prose sections follow Irving, a journalist and occasional TV recapper navigating a cool phase (and lack of purpose) in his marriage to Paz. The poem sections reflect a Greek chorus of wives who narrate the history of Irving’s suppressed desires. As the novel progresses, the two tracks collide in unexpected ways.