Overview
- The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation announced on Thursday that it named eight recipients of the 2026 Rabkin Prize, and each will receive an unrestricted $50,000 grant.
- The 2026 cohort includes Damien Davis, Melaine Ferdinand‑King, Tyler Green, Alicia Inez Guzmán, Julia Halperin, Sarah Lewis, Jan Tumlir, and Kaelen Wilson‑Goldie.
- An independent three‑member jury made the selections; the panel consisted of Irene Borger, Jaime DeSimone, and Legacy Russell and chose winners from a national pool of nominated writers.
- The foundation commissioned photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki to shoot portraits of the winners in their workspaces and will publish interviews with the cohort in the Rabkin Interviews podcast series starting September 16, 2026.
- Launched in 2017, the Rabkin Prize has now distributed about $4.1 million in awards and the unrestricted grants are intended to let writers pursue in‑depth reporting and criticism on topics such as race, land, institutional power, and representation.