Cagibi’s Macaron Prize submission period is currently closed. The prize will open in late 2019 for next year’s entries. Check back for updates.
The inaugural 2019 Macaron Prize featured guest judges Chantel Acevedo, Major Jackson, and Sheila Kohler, winners received $1000, plus publication, in each category of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Winners and second-place finalists were published in the Cagibi 2019 print issue. The publication of this issue was celebrated at KGB bar in New York City. Read more about the judges below.
Updates and News:
- Macaron Prize 2019 winners are announced on the Cagibi 2019 print issue page.
- Order the Cagibi Print Issue 2019
- Final submission period closed at midnight on February 24.
- Winners were announced in May.
- Major Jackson // The Cagibi Express Interview + Poem
- Chantel Acevedo // The Cagibi Express Interview
- Sheila Kohler // The Cagibi Express Interview
2019 Macaron Prize judges:
Chantel Acevedo for Fiction

Chantel Acevedo’s novels include Love and Ghost Letters (St. Martin’s Press), which won the Latino International Book Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book of the Year, Song of the Red Cloak, a historical novel for young adults, A Falling Star (Carolina Wren Press), winner of the Doris Bakwin Award, and National Bronze Medal IPPY Award, and The Distant Marvels (Europa Editions), one of Booklist’s Top Ten Historical Novels of 2015. The Living Infinite, a novel about the Infanta Eulalia, was published by Europa Editions in 2017. Acevedo is currently an Associate Professor of English in the MFA Program of the University of Miami. Read her Cagibi interview: Chantel Acevedo // The Cagibi Express Interview. Her website is www.chantelacevedo.com.
Major Jackson for Poetry

Major Jackson is the author of four books of poetry, including Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. He is the editor of Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and included in multiple volumes of Best American Poetry. Major Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold University Distinguished Professor at the University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review. His website www.majorjackson.com.
Sheila Kohler for Nonfiction / Memoir

Sheila Kohler is a South African author of thirteen books—novels, short stories collections, and a memoir. Kohler’s stories and essays have been widely published and anthologized, and won several awards and prizes. Kohler’s latest book, a memoir, Once We Were Sisters, was published by Penguin in January 2017 and by Canongate in England.
Born in Johannesburg, Kohler has lived in Paris, studied at the Sorbonne, and received a graduate degree in psychology at the Institut Catholique. She moved to the USA in 1981, and earned a MFA in writing at Columbia. Kohler has taught at The Writer’s Voice in 1990, SUNY Purchase, Sarah Lawrence, Colgate, CCNY, Bennington and Columbia. She has taught creative writing at Princeton since 2008 and now teaches freshman seminars there. She currently lives in New York and Amagansett. Read her Cagibi interview: Sheila Kohler // The Cagibi Express Interview. Her website is sheilakohler.com.