The Black List, the company behind the annual list of best unproduced screenplays, is expanding into fiction, launching initiatives focusing on unpublished manuscripts, the company announced on Wednesday.
Writers will have the opportunity to showcase completed novels on the website, pay for feedback from the organization’s readers and submit manuscripts to various fiction programs. The former director of writing programs at the Center for Fiction Randy Winston will oversee the organization’s expansion into fiction.
The Black List noted that the goal of the initiative is to bridge the gap between early-career writers and the publishing arena.
Black List founder and CEO Franklin Leonard told the New York Times in an interview that the lack of visibility “has really negative consequences for the writers who are trying to get their work to somebody who can do something with it, but also for the publishing industry itself, because it’s not necessarily finding the best writers and the best books.”
As part of the fiction effort, the Unpublished Novel Award will give $10,000 grants to support authors seeking to publish in genres including Children’s & Young Adult, Crime & Mystery, Horror, Literary Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction & Fantasy and Thriller & Suspense.
Judges for the 2025 Award include LeVar Burton, Roxane Gay, Radhika Jones, Tessa Thompson, Mike Flanagan and more.
“Expanding into fiction is a natural progression. Right now, there are brilliant writers around the world who don’t have access to high-quality, accountable feedback, and whose work goes unseen for reasons entirely unrelated to how good it is. That’s a massive market failure, and it changes today. I have no doubt that The Black List will find exceptional manuscripts that will become enormously popular published novels and film and television adaptations,” Leonard said in a statement.
The Black List will also partner with Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films to identify an outstanding unpublished manuscript entry that will be granted an 18-month option for $25,000. The partnership will be open to all genres, with a “particular emphasis on character-driven work in the elevated sci-fi, espionage thriller, and action-adventure space.”
