Novelist and Short Story Writer Jeffrey Condran awarded the 2026 Porter Fund Literary Prize

The recipient of the 2026 Porter Fund Literary Prize is novelist and short story writer Jeffrey Condran.

“It’s a great honor to receive the Porter Prize,” said Condran, “to receive recognition of my work by my adopted home.” Condran moved to Arkansas from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2015 to take a position teaching creative writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “I didn’t know what it would be like to move a thousand miles away, but Arkansas has been really good to me. It’s safe to say that my career has definitely flowered here.” 

In 2020 Condran published a story collection, Claire, Wading Into the Danube By Night. Since then, he’s divided his time between two longer projects. The first is a biographical novel, Face to the Sun, about the final year of Franz Kafka’s life. The second has a clear Arkansas theme: “I am writing ekphrastic flash fictions, dedicated to Arkansas art and nature. I think that might be my next book-length project, to write more ekphrastic flash fictions about southern topics.”

The Porter Fund Literary Prize is presented annually to an Arkansas writer with a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition. Nominations for the prestigious prize are submitted by previous Porter Prize recipients, who then vote to select the new winner. More than 40 writers have won the prize, which was co-founded in 1984 by writers Phillip H. McMath and Jack Butler. Previous winners include Carolyn Guinzio, Werner Trieschmann, Toni Jensen, Hope Coulter, Jay Jennings, and Jo McDougal—former Poet Laureate of Arkansas. The honor comes with an award of $5,000. 

2003 Porter Prize recipient Kevin Brockmeier, who nominated Condran, said, “The fiction Jeff has written is of a very high caliber but has not yet broken through to a wider audience, which makes him exactly the kind of writer the Porter was founded to recognize.”

Condran’s other books include the novel Prague Summer (2014), which was the silver medalist for literary fiction at the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and the story collection A Fingerprint Repeated (2013). Among Condran’s many published short stories, his story “Beggar” (2012) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and “Praha” was winner of the 2010 William Peden Prize. 

Speaking on the collection Claire, Wading into the Danube by Night, Brockmeier said, "Jeffrey Condran is a writer of great insight and consummate skill. He has a light touch, and at first you might imagine that his characters are (as the collection's title would have it) merely wading into their experiences. Early in each of these stories, though, there comes a moment when the shelf drops suddenly away, and the truth of a life comes rushing over you, and with it the pleasure of total immersion. For me this sensation was addictive."

Condran’s dedication to Arkansas literature doesn’t stop at his writing. 

“During his time in Arkansas, Jeff has made a considerable contribution to our state's literary community,” Brockmeier said, “not only through his writing and teaching, but also through his work as a publisher and what one might call an arts organizer.”

For the last few years, Condran has served on the planning committee for the Six Bridges Book Festival. 

Condran also co-founded the Zeitgeist Reading Series in 2024. The Series features two writers at Hibernia Tavern in Little Rock every third Thursday during the Fall and Spring school semesters. 

In 2012 Condran founded the small press Braddock Avenue Books, which has produced a library of nearly fifty volumes (several by Arkansas writers) since it began operating. 

Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Condran received his B.A. in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as his MFA in Creative Writing—Fiction. 

Condran is married to Meghan Condran—a bookseller and college instructor—and has a dog and two cats. His cats Adso and William are named after the monks in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. 

The award ceremony for The Porter Fund Literary Prize will be held jointly with The Booker Worthen Literary Prize. “A Prized Evening,” which is free to the public, will take place October 2 at the Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Library in downtown Little Rock.