We’re so pleased to announce that we have chosen a winner for the 2026 Hudson Prize. Huge congratulations go to Dana Dean Thomann for winning the prize for her story collection, Erratics. Congratulations also to this year’s finalists and semi-finalists. Thanks to everyone who participated in the 2026 Hudson Prize!
Erratics will be published by Black Lawrence Press in May 2028.
Dana Dean Thomann grew up on a struggling family farm in Riverside, Iowa. Inspired by her rural background, Thomann crafts the stories of her people with a specific focus on the drama and heartache of the 1980s Farm Debt Crisis. In 2016, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University. Thomann currently teaches Rhetoric in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. Beyond writing, she spends her leisure time training for The Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI), growing vegetables and native flowers, as well as taking long pasture walks with the farm dog—an Australian Shepherd named Temple in homage to Temple Grandin. Thomann’s work has been featured in Post Road, and her short story “Flood Gap” was the Flyway Journal of Writing and Environment’s Home Voices contest winner.
Excerpt from “What We Know About Harley”
It’s been sixty-three days since the bus dropped us off for summer break. The only places we’ve been are church and three trips to the Fareway Grocery. Ma wouldn’t even let us buy a 99-cent box of wafer cones for ice cream last time. The pig markets are bad. So bad we can’t afford anything. We can’t afford a vacation like the Tillmans who are going to Disneyland.
Oh! But when we go to Fareway in Iowa City, my sister and I wear our best outfits and swing a purse we each got for Christmas over our shoulders. We both filled out the ID cards for our purses. If someone finds our purses, they’ll return them. My card reads “Clara Ann Bauer.” And then I have carefully printed my address. My handwriting looks shaky compared to my sister’s looping cursive: “Eloise Sue Bauer.”
I have two dollars in my purse. My sister has thirty-five whole dollars! She’s been doing chores for my ma all summer. She’s saving up for a pair of boots she seen in a Sears catalog. The boots are pointy, cut off at the ankles, crinkled at the top, and are made of gray suede. She tells me they’ll feel soft as the muzzle of a horse. She can buy them if she saves four more dollars.
Last time we went to town, Eloise wore Strawberry Shortcake lipstick, but she wouldn’t let me borrow even a bit. Always says I’m copying her. “I don’t want your germs on my lipstick,” she snaps. Sometimes, I sneak the Johnson and Johnson No Tears Shampoo she bought with her own money because I want my hair to be shiny and brown like hers, though, I’m sandy blond and it’s always tangled and it’s ‘bout as dull as gravel rocks.
Ma will let us stray from her in the grocery store if she gives us an item to find, like flour, and only if we go together. She says it’s because of Johnny Gosch—or something—and paper deliveries all the way in Des Moines. Pa calls Des Moines an armpit. Des Moines is big, and it’s a long way away with lots of traffic. We really like it when a cool song comes over the grocery store speakers, say “Material Girl” or “Faith,” and we can sing along and look for the flour in the cool of the aisles, our Pamida jelly-shoes lightly striking the brown and white tiles. So yeah. That’s been our summer.