World Literature Today, in honor of their 350th issue, chose a shortlist of the staff’s favorite pieces that have appeared in the pages of WLT over the past ten years and then gave it over to its readers to vote on the very best. The editors say, “Over 700 readers voted in our online poll, so we extend a hearty “thanks” to all of you for participating and reading!” The work from the winners and nominees can be read on the website.

Essays
Winner: Aleš Debeljak, “In Praise of the Republic of Letters” (March 2009)
Runner-up: George Evans, “The Deaths of Somoza”(May 2007)

Poetry
Winner: Paula Meehan, “In Memory, Joanne Breen” (January 2007)
Runner-up: Pireeni Sundaralingam, “Language Like Birds” (November 2008)

Short Fiction
Winner: Mikhail Shishkin, “We Can’t Go On Living This Way,” tr. Jamey Gambrell (November 2009)
Runner-up: Amitava Kumar, “Postmortem”(November 2010)

Interviews
Winner: Jazra Khaleed interviewed by Peter Constantine (March 2010)
Runner-up: Pireeni Sundaralingam interviewed by Michelle Johnson (March 2009)

Book Reviews
Winner:Warren Motte, review of How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, by Pierre Bayard (March 2008)
Runner-up: Issa J. Boullata, review of Sadder Than Water, by Samih al-Qasim (September 2007)

The most recent issue of Ruminate Magazine announces the winners of the VanderMey Nonfiction Prize sponsored by Dr. Randall J. Vandermey and judged by Leslie Leyland Fields.

First Place
Jessica Wilbanks: “Father of Disorder”

Second Place
Lili Wright: “Shopping for Virgins”

Honorable Mentions
Colleen Clayton: “Mud Fork Holler”
Bryan Parys: “Shape of a Ghost”

Finalists
Emily Brown: “Seeing What Happens if I Do the Same Thing Over and Over Again”
Tristan Mercado: “Virtually Qualified”
Kaethe Schwehn “Tailings”
Natalie Vestin: “Purple Light in the House of God”
Lori Vos: “A Cloud of Mothers”

In Volume 35 Issue 2, Room announces its 2011 Writing Contest winners:

“Fiction judge Amber Dawn selected Rhonda Douglas’s ‘God Explains the Collapse of the Cod Fishery’ for first place. In second place we have a tie: Solveig Mardon’s ‘Deep-Tail Dancer’ and Julie Eill’s ‘There’s Nothing Like that Here.” In the poetry category, judge Elizabeth Bachinsky chose Patricia Young’s ‘Morning Class’ for first place and Crystal Sikma’s ‘Bell’ for second place. Susan Juby, who judged our creative non-fiction entries, selected Jan Redford’s ‘God or Boys’ for first place. ‘An Act of Grace’ by Christine Barbetta took second place.”

The Bellingham Review features its 2011 Contest winners in its current (Spring 2012) print issue:

49th Parallel Poetry Award
Final Judge: Lia Purpura
First Place: Jennifer Militello
“A Dictionary of Mechanics, Memory, and Skin in the Voice of Marian Parker”

Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction
Final Judge: Ira Sukrungruang
First Place: Jay Torrence
“Buckshot”

Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction
Final Judge: Adrianne Harun
First Place: Lauri Anderson
“Hand, Mouth, Ring”

The newest issue (#34) of The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine features the winners of the 2011 Poetry and Fiction Awards Competition:

Poetry Awards Competition Results:
First Prize ($1,000): “Camille Pissarro: The Bather” by Elisavietta Ritchie of Broomes Island, MD
Second Prize ($250): “Last Pharaoh” by Joyce Meyers of Wallingford, PA
Third Prize ($100): “The History of Bitumen” by Don Schofield of Thessaloniki, Greece

Fiction Awards Competition Results:
First prize ($1000): “When Ah Was Very Young ” by Enid Baron of Evanston, IL.
Second prize ($250): “Amazing Things Are Happening Here ” by Jacob M. Appel of NY, NY.
Third prize ($100): “The Barberini Princess ” by Lisa Gornick of NY, NY

Sponsored by The Hohenberg Foundation, The Pinch Literary Awards in Fiction and Poetry Winners 2011 appear in the newest issue of The Pinch (Spring 2012):

Fiction – Judged by Rick Bass

1st Place: Judith Edelman – “A Skiff of Snow”

2nd Place: James O’Brien – “Bing Red”

3rd Place: Stuart Dearnley – “Not Sleeping with the New Girl”

Poetry – Judged by Jeffrey McDaniel

1st Place: Claudine R. Moreau – ”Father-in-Law in His Tighty-Whities.”

2nd Place: John Sibley Williams – “Description of the Sky.”

The Hart House Review annual 2012 issue features winners from their 2011 Hart House Poetry Contest:

First Prize
Marlena Millikin, “Miner’s Hands”

Second Place
Michael Labate, “Domesticity”

Third Place
Jenn Gardener, “Clusters”

First Place, 2011 Contest Winner
Liza Kobrinsky, “Mother Courage”

[Cover Artwork: “Lettermess” by Jp King]

Fiddlehead #251 (Spring 2012) includes the winning entries of their 21st Annual Contest:

Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize
Jim Johnstone, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”

Poetry Honorable Mention: Michael Londry, “Before my Nephew Hiked” and Micahel Quilty, “Leaving the Gym”

Short Ficiton First Prize
Cody Klippenstein, “We’ve Gotta Get out of Here”

Fiction Honorable Mention: Valerie Spencer, “The Amaretto” and Kevin A. Couture, “How to Rescue a Bear Cub”

Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose, & Art Summer 2012 (#13) features works by winners of the Able Muse 30-Day Workshop: Janice D. Soderling in fiction and Rob Wright in poetry. The magazine also includes works by honorable mentions for the 2011 Write Prize for Poetry: Carolyn Moore, John Beaton, Kevin Corbett, Richard Wakefield, Anna M. Evans, Julie Bruck, and T.S. Kerrigan.

The YES! National Student Writing Competition gives students the chance to write for a real audience and be published by an award-winning magazine. Each quarter, students have the opportunity to read and respond to a selected YES! Magazine article.

For Winter 2012, participants read and responded to the YES! Magazine article, “What’s the Harm in Hunting?” by Alyssa Johnson. All of the winning essays are available full-text online.

Winter 2012 Writing Competition Winners

Middle School: Stro Hastings

High School: Johnny Bobo

College: Jenny Courtney

Powerful Voice: Lisa Schwartz

The newest issue of Alligator Juniper from Prescott College (AZ) features the winners from the publication’s annual writing and photography contest, as well as the winners of the Suzanne Tito Prize (a full list of finalists can be found on the website):

The Winter 2012 (v39 n2) issue of Grain features the winners of the 23rd Annual Short Grain Writing Contest.

Fiction – Judged by Zsuzsi Gartner
1st Prize – Pete Duval
2nd Prize – Zack Haslam
3rd Prize – Zoey Peterson

Poetry – Judged by Jeramy Dodds
1st Prize – Tim Bowling
2nd Prize – Phoebe Wang
3rd Prize – Vincent Colistro

The winner and runners-up for the 2011 Barthelme Prize for Short Prose, as judged by Sarah Manguso, appear in the Summer/Fall 2012 issue of Gulf Coast:

Winner
“Grand Canyon II” by Erica Olsen of Dolores, CO

Runners-up
“Why I Became a Fireman” by Paul Zaic of Dumfries, VA
“Master Bedroom” by Sonja Vitow of Brighton, MA

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their February Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. The next Short Story Award competition will take place in May. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Syed Ali Haider [pictured] of San Marcos, TX, wins $1500 for “Scheherazade.” His story will be published in the Summer 2013 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out next May. This is Syed’s first fiction in print.

Second place: Clay Pearn, of Toronto, Ontario, wins $500 for “Turtle Eggs.”

Third place: Anna Chieppa, of Barcelona, Spain, wins $300 for “Whatever Makes You Happy.”

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Deadline soon approaching for Family Matters: April 30

Glimmer Train hosts this competition twice a year, and first place has been increased to $1500 plus publication in the journal. It’s open to all writers for stories about families in all configurations. Most submissions to this category run 1500-6000 words, but can go up to 12,000. Click here for complete guidelines.

2011 Winners of the Vallum Award for Poetry appear in the Winter 2012 (9:1) “Pakistan” issue and can also be read online:

First Place: “Telecommuting Spouses” by Peter Richardson
Second Place: “Veninum Lupinum” by Jack Miller

Honorable Mentions
“Dark Matter” by Roxanna Bennett
“Tougher Than Leather” by Joseph Anderson
“Up Ahead” by Lucy Ricciardi

Issue 32 of Passages North features the winners of their 2011 poetry and nonfiction contests:

Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize
Judged by Henry Hughes
Winner: “Nocturne” by Charlotte Muse

Thomas J. Hruska Memorial Nonfiction Prize
Winner: “Mrs. Anderson [Or a Study of Apocalypse as an After-School Special]” by Julie Marie Wade
Honorable Mention: “Dog Nation” by David Jaicks

Winners of the 2012 Yalobusha Review contests are included in YR: 17. Marylee Macdonald’s story, “The Pancho Villa Coin,” was selected by William Gay for the Barry Hannah Fiction Prize, while Sandra Beasley chose Billie R. Tadros’s poem, “Reactor,” for the Yellowwood Poetry Prize.

Sycamore Review editors culled 20 finalists from a Wabash Contest record of nearly 600 entries. From these, former U.S. Poet Laureate Louise Glück has selected Maya Jewell Zeller and her poem “Caterpillars” as the winner of the 2011 Wabash Prize for Poetry. Glück also chose Carrie Causey and her poem “Woman in the Wall” as this year’s contest first runner-up and Michael Tyrell as second runner-up for his poem “The Primal Scene.” Each of these poems are included in the current issue (24.1, Winter/Spring 2011), along with work from finalists Emilia Phillips and Kristin Robertson. A complete list of finalists is available here.

Jen Michalski has been announced the winner of the Black Lawrence Press 2012 Big Moose Prize for her novel The Tide King.

Jen Michalski’s first collection of fiction, Close Encounters, is available from So New (2007); her second, From Here, is forthcoming from Aqueous Books (2013); and her collection of novellas is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013). She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: Baltimore (CityLit Press 2010), which won a 2010 “Best of Baltimore” award from Baltimore Magazine. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww, a co-host of the monthly reading series The 510 Readings and the biannual Lit Show in Baltimore, and interviews writers at The Nervous Breakdown.

For the Big Moose Prize short list and long list, please visit the Black Lawrence Press blog.

“Renga for an Absent Lover,” by Sheryl Mebane, won the 2012 Gemini Magazine Poetry Open and the $1,000 prize. A jazz musician, Sheryl is the author of the jazz novel Lady Bird. The second place prize of $100 went to Gerardo Mena for “A Nursing Home Boxer to a High School Volunteer,” and Christina Lovin won the third place award for “11/11/11.”

Honorable mentions: “Depression Is My Happy Place,” by Jendi Reiter; “What the Fuck?” by Russ Dickerson, and “Morris’ Magic,” by Aurora M. Lewis.

All of these poems are available for reading online in the March 2012 issue of Gemini Magazine.

[Cover Art: “BOB MARLEY’S HAIR” by Debra Hurd]

The Spring 2012 issue of The Los Angeles Review (volume 11) includes A Room of Her Own‘s Orlando Prize winners:

Orlando Creative Nonfiction Prize
Doris Ferleger, “Five Full Moons”

Orlando Short Fiction Prize
Branden Boyer-White, “Crossing”

Orlando Flash Fiction Prize
Amy Silverberg, “Write This Down”

Orlando Poetry Prize
Kathleen Savino, “History of Glass”

A full list of winners and runners-up can be found here.

The newest issue of Schoolcraft College’s national literary magazine The MacGuffin (Winter 2012) features the winners of the issue of the 16th National Poet Hunt Contest, judged by Terry Blackhawk:

First place:
Barbara Saunier, “My Body, This Aging Cheese”

Honorable mention:
Sharron Singleton, “Hunger Moon”
Liza Young, “The Color of Pleasure”

You can read the winners and finalists from The Southeast Review 2011 contests, listed below, in the newest issue (winter/spring, Volume 30.1):

World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest judged by Robert Olen Butler

Winner: Kim Henderson, “A Burnside Park Sunburn”

Finalists:
Jen Fawkes, “Chrysalis” and “Hobbled”
Thomas Israel Hopkins, “The Coat My Mother Gave Me”
Elizabeth Long, “Trip Talk”
Nancy Ludmerer, “Ecosystem”
Steve Mitchell, “Flare” and “Watching the Door”
Niloo Sarabi, “Abba”
Jeannine Dorian Vesser, “Summer Vacation”

SER Poetry Contest judged by David Kirby

Winner: Francine Witte, “Wolf Logic”

Finalists:
Samuel Amadon, “Evergreen Avenue”
Kevin Coll, “Buddhist”
Deborah Flanagan, “Casanova: On Flight”
Melanie Graham, “Blood Words”
Kiki Vera Johnson, “The Excavation”
Rebecca Lauren, “The Year of Fires”
Greg Weiss, “The May or May Not Blues” and “The Mississippi Scheme”
Kathleen Winter, “Jellyfish Elvis”

SER Narrative Nonfiction Contest judged by Mark Winegardner

Winner: Jacob M. Appel, “Livery”

Finalists:
Carol J. Clouse, “The Luck We Spent”
Barbara W. Sands, “Safe in the Arms of Elvis”

Winners of the Weave 2011 contests are featured in the newest issue (7). The winner of the poetry contest, selected by Lisa Marie Basile, is “Dream” by Caleb Curtiss. Honorable mentions are “Peach Pull” by Jada Ach, “Fig Eaters” by Megan Cowen, and “Caroline Fox Considers Jeremy Bentham’s Proposal (1805)” by Noel Sloboda. The winner of the flash fiction contest, selected by Bridgette Shade, is “White Bread” by Kelly Brice Baron. Honorable mention is “Blighted” by Andra Hibbert.

The newest issues of Laurel Review (Fall 2011) features the winners of the first annual Midwest Short Fiction Contest for 2011. The winning story is “The Lost Episodes” by Bryan Furuness, and the runner-up is “Our Time in Norrmalmstorgh” by Christopher Merkner.

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their December Fiction Open competition. This competition is held quarterly. Stories generally range from 3000-6000 words, though up to 20,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Jonathan Freiberger [pictured], of Fort Lee, NJ, wins $2500 for “Pinsky Gets It Right.” His story will be published in the Spring 2013 issue of Glimmer Train Stories. This is Jonathan’s first print publication.

Second place: J. A. Howard, of Pittsburgh, PA, wins $1000 for “The Way It Is Around Here.” Her story will also appear in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, and this will be her first major print publication.

Third place: Matthew Ducker, of Brooklyn, NY, wins $600 for “Middleweight.” His story will also be published in Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Short Story Award for New Writers: February 29
This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Most submissions to this category run 2000-6000 words, but can go up to 12,000. First place prize has been increased to $1500. Click here for complete guidelines.

The Spring 2012 issue of Knockout Literary Magazine includes the winners and runners-up of the 2009 The International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize as selected by Carl Phillips:

First place winner: “Occupation” by Kelly Madigan Erlandson
Second place winner: “Archaic Bronze” by Christian Gullette
Third place winner: “Wood” by Larry Bradley

First runner-up: “Modern Ripple” by Rickey Laurentiis
Second runner-up: “August, near Arles” by Richard Foerster
Third runner-up: “Faggot” by Rickey Laurentiis

Issue 6 of PANK Magazine includes the winners of the 1,001 Awesome Words Contest, 2011:

Tyler Gobble, “To Toss is to Life”
Erin Fitzgerald, “No One Cares About Your Problems”
Naomi Day, “A List of My Shortcomings”

The Malahat Review Winter 2011 includes the 2011 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize winner “Hoarding” by Anne Marie Todkill. The Malahat Review website also includes a Web exclusive: Interview with Anne Marie Todkill and a link to another review with the author in The Martlet.

Black River Press has announced that Nick McRae has won the Fall 2011 Black River Chapbook Competition for his collection of poems, Mountain Redemption.

Nick McRae’s poems, reviews, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, Passages North, The Southern Review, Third Coast, and other journals. Formerly a Fulbright fellow in the Slovak Republic and a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, he now studies poetry and teaches creative and analytical writing at The Ohio State University, where he also serves as Poetry Review Editor for The Journal.

Complete lists of the Fall 2011 Black River Chapbook Competition finalists and semi-finalists can be found on the Black Lawrence Press blog.

The newest issue of Event (40.3) features winning works of the magazine’s annual non-fiction contest judged by Kevin Chong: “Busted” by Chris Donahoe and “Far Away Sick” by Krissy Darch.