Zak Jones

Jury Citation

“In Fancy Gap, Zak Jones pulls us into the hills of Appalachia — into the poverty, illness, religious fundamentalism, and substance abuse that shape this world. It’s an exceptional, uncanny read: Jones brings the setting alive through sound, taste, smell, and imagery in a slow burn that leaves readers feeling as if they, too, are in detox from a world they’ve only ever heard whispered about. The constant emotion, energy, and movement give the novel a completeness that makes its candor even more praiseworthy. Beauty, despair, longing, and a search for community are all wrapped together — and the reader, like the characters, ends up with their own sense of being saved through the skillful crafting of this novel.”—2026 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Jury (David Chariandy, Conor Kerr, Kathleen Winter) 

Jury Citation

“In ‘So Much More to Say,’ Zak Jones digs his shovel into narrative terrain perpetually at the risk of breaking apart, much like the flooding South Carolina cemetery where his story is set. We are invited into the world of a young gravedigger who has the Sisyphean task of reburying the bloated bodies that come loose after rains free them from the red mud in which they have been encased. Navigating race relations and human dignity, the impeccable drawl of the author’s first-person narrator turns potential horrors into profundities, and cautionary tales into wisdoms.”