Meet the Winners of Narratively’s 2023 Profile Prize

For our first-ever Profile Prize, our editorial staff and esteemed guest judges sifted through hundreds of submissions to choose these three thrilling tales.

Nyssa Chow, Lisa Heyamoto and Andy Rieber | Header image by Yunuen Bonaparte

Wow! For the inaugural Narratively Profile Prize, we put out the call for riveting true stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Our editorial team was blown away by the incredible submissions we received from Alaska to Azerbaijan, profiling everyone from Black Mermaids to a millionaire toddler. We painstakingly narrowed it down to a handful of finalists, with the winner chosen by our amazing guest judges: legendary profile writer Gay Talese, groundbreaking book publisher Lisa Lucas and New York Times-bestselling author Rebecca Traister.

Thanks so much to Gay, Lisa and Rebecca for generously donating their time to help further our cause of elevating diverse, remarkable voices. Now, drumroll please…

Our Grand Prize Winner is Lisa Heyamoto, who wrote an absolutely breathtaking historical profile about a high school championship baseball game played behind barbed wire. It was April 18, 1945. The Ariz…