The Maurice Prize, a literary prize celebrating unpublished fiction, was established by John Lescroart, and has been awarded annually since 2005. The prize is hosted jointly by Lescroart and the University of California, Davis English Department. The prize is a gift from Lescroart in honor of his father, Maurice, for whom the contest is named. The prize was increased from $5,000 to $10,000 beginning in 2022.
It is awarded for the best sustained work of fiction (a novel, novel in stories, or other sustained book-length prose fiction form) submitted by alumni who have not yet published or had a book-length manuscript in fiction accepted for publication by the contest deadline. Literary merit is the predominant criterion in selecting the winning entry. It is Lescroart's hope to inspire UC Davis graduates to publish their literary work.[1]
| Year | Author | Work | Notes | References | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Spring Warren | The Breaks | — | [2] [3] | |
| 2006 | Water Ghosts | Originally released as Locke 1928 | [4] | ||
| 2007 | Elizabeth Chamberlin | these people, they crawl all over the place | — | — | |
| 2008 | Melanie Thorne | Hand Me Down | — | — | |
| 2009 | Angie Chau | A Map Back to You | Released as Quiet As They Come | — | |
| 2010 | Bear Down, Bear North | — | — | ||
| 2011 | Maria Kuznetsova | The Accident | — | — | |
| 2012 | Cora Stryker | The Evolution of Flight | — | — | |
| 2013 | Naomi Williams | Landfalls | Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2015 | — | |
| 2014 | Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi | Poor as You Are, My Heart, Don’t Grieve Here in Earth | — | — | |
| 2015 | Reema Rajbanshi | Sugar, Smoke, Song | — | — | |
| 2016 | Megan Cummins | Beasts | — | [5] | |
| 2017 | Ben Hinshaw | Exactly What You Mean, A Novel in Stories | — | ||
| 2018 | No prize awarded | Program hiatus | — | ||
| 2019 | Peter Shahrokh | A Wind Will Come | — | — | |
| 2020 | Laura Marsh | SAV AGE(S) | — | — | |
| 2021 | No prize awarded | — | — | ||
| 2022 | Kirk Colvin | Bloodless Coup | — | — | |
| 2023 | Jessica Guerrieri | Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea | — | — | |