On June 5, 1851, just days before her 40th birthday, Harriet Beecher Stowe published the first installment of a serialized story in the anti-slavery weekly newspaper, The National Era. 

175 years later, we know this to be the international best-seller, Uncle Tom's Cabin—Stowe's debut novel. An event in print that shook the nation. 

At the Stowe Center, we tell the story of Harriet's powerful literary activism, we tell the true stories that inspired her to action, and we celebrate the legacy of this social justice tradition in America with our annual Stowe Prize for Literary Activism. 

Our 2026 winner is Princess Joy L. Perry for her novel This Here is Love. Like Stowe, Perry has made her impressive debut in middle age. 

"A story takes maybe just as long as it takes," Perry shared in an interview with Additions to the Archive. "There are things that I needed to do, things that I needed to see, experiences, losses. I needed to change. I needed to grow up." 

"That label, 'debut author at 50,' there was also something really exciting about knowing that I have a group of people out there who are my age, who didn't give up," Perry continued. "If you feel like you have a book or story, maybe you just needed all those life experiences so that you could be better able to write this story." 

And we are grateful for Perry's perseverance. "I feel that if I didn't tell this story, who's gonna tell it?" she said. "This story came to me. And if I abandoned it, then it wouldn't be in the world." 

This Here Is Love, set in the 1690s, is a stirring novel filled with resilient, persistent resistance: resistance to oppression, resistance to violence, resistance to losing hope, resistance to losing humanity—the most important aspect of being, and retained thanks to love. 

The Stowe Center honors Stowe's legacy of resistance to oppression through literary activism by amplifying the voices of those who advocate hope and freedom both then and now, such as Princess Joy L. Perry and all our previous Stowe Prize winners. 

Tickets for the 2026 Stowe Prize are available now. For more information about the Stowe Prize for Literary Activism, visit StoweCenter.org/Love. 

We look forward to celebrating with you on September 23! 

Casey Grambo is the Director of Development at the Stowe Center for Literary Activism, where she works closely with supporters to advance the Center’s mission of social justice and literary activism. A fundraising professional, artist, producer, teacher, and activist, she brings more than a decade of experience in arts and nonprofit development to inspire engagement that fosters empathy, empowerment, and lasting change.