Spotify x JED Award Recipients Announced

Bree Barton, Dennis Haseley, Daniel Patinkin, Terah Tsuyako Summers, and Solomon Tesfaye have been named as the inaugural recipients of the Spotify x JED Impact Award, an initiative co-sponsored by The Black List, Spotify, and The Jed Foundation (JED) recognizing exceptional depictions of mental health in unpublished fiction.

The recipients will each receive a $10,000 grant to “help foster their work in mental health storytelling,” per the award committee, and will retain the rights to their unpublished, novel-length manuscripts. As a part of the program, Spotify and JED, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting emotional health, will also collaborate on resources to support authors’ creative and personal well-being, per an announcement.

“Gratitude to our partners Casey Acierno and Henna Silvennoinen at Spotify and Courtney Knowles for JED for their deep commitment to supporting such an important initiative, and never wavering in their belief that help-seeking and help-giving narratives, stories that challenge mental health stereotypes makes for better, more responsible writing,” said Randy Winston, creative director of fiction at the Black List. 

Originally a platform for Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays, the Black List expanded to include unpublished novels in September 2024, and is dedicated to “identifying and celebrating exceptional storytelling,” per the organization. The Spotify x JED Impact Award launched on the site in February 2025.