Ruminate Summer 2015 includes the first and second place winners and the honorable mention of the 2015 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize judged by Scott Russel Sanders.
First Place
D.L. Mayfield for Blessed are the Pure in Heart
Second Place
Elizabeth Dark Wiley for “If you Want it to Last…”
Honorable Mention
Shannon Huffman Polson for Naked: A Triptych
The newest issue of Southern Humanities Review (v48 n4) includes a special poetry section featuring the winner, runners-up and finalists for the 2014 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize honoring Jake Adam York (pictured; 1972-2012).
WINNER
Amanda Gunn
Gunn was the guest of honor at “Abide”: A Tribute to Jake Adam York and His Work, October 2014.
RUNNERS-UP
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Shara Lessley
FINALISTS
Lauren Camp
Kai Carlson-Wee
Joshua Gage
Jennifer Horne
Jeremy Keenan Jackson
Anna Leahy
Enid Shomer
David Tucker
Seth Brady Tucker
Richard Tyler
The Spring 2015 issue of Chariton Review features the winner and finalists of their 2015 Short Fiction Prize, judged by Christine Sneed. This winner of this annual award for the best unpublished short fiction on any theme up to 5,000 words in English receives a prize of $500 and two or three finalists will receive $200 each. All U.S. entrants will receive a complimentary copy of the Spring prize issue in which the winners are published.
2015 Winner
“Sugar Bowl” by Jo DeWaal
Finalists
“Delivery in Göteborg” by Mike Lewis-Beck
“Die Laughing” by Kim Norris
“Big Sisters” by Louise Kantro
The Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize is awarded annually, with a first prize of $1,000 and publication. During this past May, the 2014 winner was published: No Map of the Earth Includes Stars by Christina Olivares.
Also the winner of YesYes Books’s 2014 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Competition with her chapbook Petition, Olivares has poems published or forthcoming in Five Quarterly, decomP, Vinyl Poetry, and PALABRA, among others.
Check out the Marsh Hawk Press website for more information about No Map of the Earth Includes Stars or pick up a copy.
The winner and honorable mentions of the 2014 Barthelme Prize are featured in the Summer/Fall 2015 issue of Gulf Coast:
2014 Barthelme Prize
Amy Hempel, Judge
Winner
Emma Bolden, “Gifted”
Honorable Mentions
Patty Yumi Cottrell, “No One Makes Plans”
Susan Lilley, “Delmonicos”
The Barthelme Prize for Short Prose is open to pieces of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro-essays of 500 words or fewer. The contest awards its winner $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will receive $250, and all entries will be considered for paid publication on the Gulf Coast website as Online Exclusives.
The Chattahoochee Review Spring 2015 includes the winners of the Lamar York Prizes for story, judged by David James Poissant, and essay, judged by Marcia Aldrich. Each winner receives $1000 and publication. This year’s recipients are Joel Wayne for “Brother’s Keeper” (fiction) and Amy Clark (pictured) for “The Rocks” (nonfiction). A complete list of finalists can be found here.
The John Simmons Short Fiction Award is open to any writer who hasn’t previously published a volume of prose fiction. Charles Haverty is the 2015 winner with his forthcoming collection Excommunicados.
From the University of Iowa Press’s website: “By turns haunting, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Charles Haverty’s debut collection charts the journeys of men, women, and children cast out of familiar territory into emotional terra incognita where people and things are rarely what they seem. . . . There are secrets at the center of each of these daring and original stories—secrets that separate these characters from one another but grow in the mind and the heart, connecting them with all of us.”
To be available in October 2015, copies of Excommunicados can be preordered from the University of Iowa Press website.
Mississippi Review Summer 2015 is their “Prize Issue,” so includes the “The Parents” by Charles Ramsay McCrory, winner of the fiction prize, and “Just Talking to Myself” by Sarah New, winner of the poetry prize. The remainder of the issue includes finalists for each of the prizes. A full list of authors can be found here.
The 2015-2016 annual issue of Paterson Literary Review generously features all the winners and honorable mentions of their 2014 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award:
FIRST PRIZE (shared)
Linda A. Cronin, Cedar Grove, NJ, “Because It’s Mine”
and
Linda Hillringhouse, Englewood, NJ, “The Bristol Plaza Hotel, Wildwood”
SECOND PRIZE (shared)
Dante Di Stefano, Endwell, NY, “A Morning Prayer While Pumping Gas at the Gulf Gas Station”
and
Abby E. Murray, Endicott, NY, “A Poem for Ugly People”
THIRD PRIZE (shared)
Jason Allen, Binghamton, NY, “Pop”
and
Kenneth Ronkowitz, Cedar Grove, NJ, “That Summer Between”
A complete list with honorable mentions can be found here.
The 2015 Iowa Short Fiction Award from the University of Iowa Press has been awarded to Edward Hamlin for his debut collection Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories.
Judge Karen Russell says of her selection, “The stories in Night in Erg Chebbi are sweeping and intimate and awesomely confident of their own effects. They document staggering, cataclysmic changes—forest fire, flash flood, revolution, murder—as well as the slow violence of grief and degenerative disease. [ . . . ] This is a collection with both depth and breadth, a book dedicated to revealing ‘the universal concealed in the weft of the particular.’ Hamlin spins the globe, jumping nimbly from a treetop lodge on a Brazilian riverbank to the lawn of a governor’s mansion on the eve of an execution to Merzouga, Morocco, ‘gateway to the dune sea of Erg Chebbi.’ [ . . . ] Each story here is a world in miniature, illuminated by the flashbulb bursts of Hamlin’s luminous, controlled prose.”
Available in August, readers can preorder a copy of Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories on the University of Iowa Press website.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their Very Short Fiction Award. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers for stories with a word count under 3000. The next Very Short Fiction competition will take place in July. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Spencer Hyde [pictured], of Franktown, CO, wins $1500 for “Light as Wings.” His story will be published in Issue 97 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first major fiction publication.
Second place: John Patrick Sheridan, of Schenectady, NY, wins $500 for “The Narrators.”
Third place: Steve Lambert, of St. Augustine, FL, wins $300 for “Fishing with Max Hardy.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline coming up for the Fiction Open: June 30
Glimmer Train hosts this competition quarterly, and first place is $2500 plus publication in the journal. This category has been won by both beginning and veteran writers – all are welcome! There are no theme restrictions. Word count generally ranges from 2000 – 6000, though up to 20,000 is fine. Click here for complete guidelines.
The Vallum Award for Poetry 2014 Contest Winners are featured in the newest issue.
1st place
“The Long Study” by Alexei Perry Cox
2nd place
“Last evening I stumbled” by Carla Barkman
Honorable mentions
“Apple to Apple” by Susan Hughson
“pass this note” by Domenico Capilongo
The Gival Press Poetry Award is held annually. Open to national and international poets, winners receive $1,000 and publication. The 2013 winner, We Deserve the Gods We Ask For by Seth Brady Tucker was published this past fall.
Judge Lisa Graley, winner of the previous year’s poetry award, says of her selection, “This is sinewy writing at its most sturdy and tenacious. His—tangle of silk and muscle—is sure to stagger and transfix.”
More information about the Gival Press Poetry Award and We Deserve the Gods We Ask For can be found at the Gival Press website.
Indiana Review v37 n1 features 2014 Fiction Prize winner (“The Passeur” by E.E. Lyons) and finalist (“Come Go With Me” by Nora Bonner), 2014 1/2K Prize Winner (“The Girl Next Door to the Girl Next Door” by Amy Woolard), and, while not a contest winner, a cool “Special Folio: Graphic Memoir” featuring work by Bianca Stone, Douglas Karney, Diane Sorensen, Arewen Donahue, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.
The newest Mid-American Review (v35 n2) features winners and runners-up of the magazine’s 2014-2015 Poetry and Fiction Awards:
James Wright Poetry Award
Oliver de la Paz, Judge
Winner: “Mapping the Tongue” by Geetha Iyer
Runner-Up: “Iki Dugno,” by Keith Kopka
Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award
Alissa Nutting, Judge
Winner: “Postcard from a Funeral, Cumberland, Maryland, October 16, 1975” by Miles Harvey
Runner-Up: “The Turnip Girl,” by Laura I. Miller
See the full list of finalists as well as judges’ comments on the winning works here.
The Slapering Hol Press Sanger-Stewart Chapbook Competition is open to writers who haven’t yet published a chapbook collection. Richard Parisio is the 2014 winner with his collection The Owl Invites Your Silence, released this year.
From the editors: “Parisio’s wise and moving words emerge from his training as a naturalist, teacher, journalist, and conservationist. This is a book of poems written by a poet who pays keen attention to the natural world that is quickly being destroyed. It is an important book for our time.”
Parisio has worked as an interpretive naturalist for 40 years and is a nature columnist for the local paper in New Paltz, NY. His work can be found in three regional anthologies, as well as The Kerf, Spillway, and Common Ground Review, among other journals.
Winners of the 19th National Poet Hunt Contest along with commentary from Judge Carl Dennis are featured in the Spring 2015 issue of The MacGuffin.
First Place
“Requiem” by Timothy McBride
Honorable Mention
“Voyager Greets Life Beyond the Heliosphere” by James K. Zimmerman
“Moher” by Kevin Griffin
Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose #14 features the winners of their 2015 contest. A prize of $1000 goes to one winning entry, with two additional entries receiving $250 each as well as publication.
First Prize Creative Nonfiction
Dogwood Grand Prize
“Los Ojos” by Daisy Hernández
Judge Jill Christman
First Prize Poetry
“Under The Tongue” by Ed Frankel
Judge Mark Neely
First Prize Fiction
“We’ll Understand It By and By” Rosie Forrest
Judge Rachel Basch
A full article with judges’ comments can be read here.
Also check out this interview with artist Shanna Melton, whose gorgeous painting of Espranza Spalding is featured on the cover.
The Word Works’s Tenth Gate Prize, “named in honor of Jane Hirshfield, recognizes the wisdom and dedication of mid- and late-career poets.”
Lisa Sewell was recognized in 2014 with her winning collection Impossible Object, selected by Series Editor Leslie McGrath for “its eloquence, originality, cohesion, and craft.”
Released in April, readers can pick up copies of Impossible Object from the publisher’s website or from SPD.
Winner of the 2014 First Book Competition from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 50 Water Dreams by Siwar Masannat, selected by Ilya Kaminsky, is now available for purchase on the publisher’s website.
Of his selection, Kaminsky says, “How lucky we are to find a poetry debut that isn’t afraid of ideas, of mysteries, of politics, of passion. How brave she is to say ‘I saw nobody coming so I went instead.’ And to dare us: ‘I want to put you in my revolution.’ Like Zbigniew Herbert, this poet wants ‘to hide you in my eyelids & the nation,’ like Venus Khoury-Ghata, she makes a mythological pastoral, a book of voices that speak for more than one person.”
Masannat’s writing can also be found in New Orleans Review, Gargoyle, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other journals.
Every year RHINO Poetry selects works that have had the greatest impact on their editors. Cash awards are given in poetry for First, Second, and Honorable Mention, and the First Place winner is nominated for a Pushcart Prize (with other place winners occasionally nominated as well). There is also a Translation Prize which receives a cash award as well. There is no application process; the winners are selected from the general submissions to be published in the annual and are also published on the magazine’s website.
2015 Editors’ Prize in Poetry
First Prize: Jose Angel Araguz for “Joe”
Second Prize: Paul Tran for “[He picked me up]”
Honorable Mention: Nate Marshall for “buying new shoes”
2015 Translation Prize
“Cause” by Farouk Goweda, translated from the Arabic by Walid Abdallah and Andy Fogle
“Devil & Freedom” by Olja Savičević Ivančević, translated from the Croatian by Andrea Jurjević
The Spring 2015 issue of Open Minds: The Poetry and Literature of Mental Health Recovery features winners of the 2015 BrainStorm Poetry Contest:
First Place
“J’Arrive” by Cindy St. Onge
Portland, Oregon, USA
Second Place
“Curb Collection” by Tamara Simpson
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Third Place
“What Has and Hasn’t” by Tyler Gabrysh
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Honorable Mentions to be published fall 2015:
“Ophelia” by Ruthie-Marie Beckwith
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA
“Observational” and “The 4th Floor” by Katy Richey
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
“The Rain King” by Thomas Leduc
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
The Open Mouth of the Vase by Amy Ash, the winner of the 2013 Cider Press Review Book Award, was published in January.
“Pain, love, regret, joy, longing, loss, humor, and an earthy sexuality all find memorable expression in these poems. Ash has a gift for reversing reader expectations in illuminating ways, as well as for coining metaphors that startle with their aptness and their ability to refresh the world,” says judge Charles Harper Webb of his selection.
The Open Mouth of the Vase is Amy Ash’s first full-length collection. Pick up a copy or learn more at the Cider Press Review website.
Study for Necessity by JoEllen Kwiatek was released in April 2015. Winner of the 2014 Iowa Poetry Prize from University of Iowa Press, “Kwiatek’s poems emit the uncanny luminosities of the artists’ worlds they refer to: those of Caspar David Friedrich, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Odilon Redon. Each is a ‘token of strangeness’ built with delicacy and restraint, embodying, vivifying what the poet calls the mind’s ‘lonesome flourish.’ Like entries in a recondite log, or the etchings, or tracks, of a complex consciousness, this work cannot help but identify its own material and spiritual corollaries: a bridle worn to threadbare, a voyage that ‘grows more & more captivating. More terse.’ It is, as one poem puts it, as if seeing / were a form of radiant / isolation. And yet the presence established over the course of the book is profoundly connective, rich with acute physical apprehension and charge. It moves under pressure toward its singular end, its very ‘necessity,’” says judge Emily Wilson.
Read an excerpt of Study for Necessity or pick up at copy at the University of Iowa Press website.
december literary magazine Spring/Summer 2015 includes the winners of their annual Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. First Place: Chelsea Jennings [pictured] for her poem “Heirloom” and Honorable Mention Sam Roxas-Shua for his poem “A Beast in the Chapel.” Contest judge Mary Szybist commented on the finalists, “It was difficult to select a winner from among the many terrifically interesting poems that were submitted to this year’s contest. In the end, however, these two poems . . . were the ones that took hold in my imagination, haunted me, and compelled me to return to them.”
The Spring 2015 issue of The Filddlehead includes the winners of their 24th annual Tell It Slant literary contest:
Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize
Sean Howard, “Cases (Unbound Poems, from Nova Scotia Reports)”
Honorable Mentions
Michael Prior, “The Hinny”
Julie Cameron Gray, “Skinbyrds”
Short Fiction First Prize:
Lisa Alward, “Cocktail”
Honorable Mentions
David McLaren, “[nar-uh-gan-sits] a Rhode Island Thanksgiving”
Kari Lund-Teigen, “Something Like Joy”
These works can be read on The Fiddlehead website along with commentary from Editor Ross Leckie on the winning entries.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their March Family Matters competition. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories about family of all configurations. The next Family Matters competition will take place in September. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Clare Thompson-Ostrander [pictured], of Amesbury, MA, wins $1500 for “The Manual for Waitresses Everywhere.” Her story will be published in Issue 97 of Glimmer Train Stories. This is her first national publication.
Second place: Wendy Rasmussen, of Seattle, WA, wins $500 for “Mesopotamian Nights.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train, increasing her prize to $700.
Third place: Paula Tang, of Riverside, CA, wins $300 for “Little China House.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline extended! Short Story Award for New Writers: June 10
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 1500-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. First place prize is $1500. Second/third: $500/$300. Click here for complete guidelines.
The newest issue of Sierra Nevada Review features select winners of their 5th annual High School Writing Contest, a national competition for high school juniors and seniors. Chosen from a record 525 entries from students across the United States, the winners in each category receive a cash prize of $500 for first place, $250 for second and $100 for third, and the $100 Local’s Prize honors student writers from Nevada and California. The winners also receive a $20,000 scholarship offer from SNC and consideration for publication. For a full list of winners, visit SNR’s website here. Included in the issue:
Fiction
First Place: Emily Zhang (Boyds MA), “Midwestern Myth”
Non-Fiction
Lindsay Emi (Westlake Village, CA), “Latin Class in Seven (VII) Parts”
Gabriel Braunstein (Arlington MA), “Family on the Commuter Rail”
Poetry
Oriana Tang (Livingston NJ), “Bildungsroman”
The Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Book Poetry Competition’s 2014 winner has been released at the beginning of the month. Lee Upton’s Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles was selected by Erin Belieu. Of her selection, Belieu says, “This is without a doubt my new favorite book. Upton has long been a well-respected poet, prose writer, and literary critic, but she deserves much more popular attention, including yours.”
You can start by checking out Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles on the CSU website.
The Malahat Review #190 features the winners of the 2015 Open Season Awards:
Poetry
Rebecca Salazar, “synaesthesia”
Fiction
Wanda Hurren, “Rain Barrel”
Creative Nonfiction/Memoir
Michael Carson, “The Neanderthal and the Cave”
The publication includes an interview with each winning author which are also available on the publication’s website here.
[Cover Art: Étant donné: the Loris perched on his neoclassical plinth, 2008. Polystyrene, concrete adhesive, paper, paint / 68 in. × 24 in. × 21 in. / Collection of the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art / Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay]
The Miller Williams Poetry Prize is annually held by the University of Arkansas Press. Each year, three finalists are announced with one winner of $5000 and publication.
George David Clark, with his first collection of poems Reveille, is the 2015 winner. Editor-in-Chief of 32 Poems Magazine, Clark has also earned the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Poetry and a Lily Postdoctoral Fellowship, among other honors.
Published this past February, Reveille, the publisher’s website says, “is rooted in awe and driven by the impulse to praise. At heart, these are love poems, though their loves are varied and complicated by terrible threats: that we will cry out and not be answered, fall asleep and never wake. Against such jeopardy Reveille fixes our attention on a lightening horizon.”
Readers can pick up a copy of this prize winner from the University of Arkansas Press website.
The Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry began in 1983 and is open to poets for a manuscript of original poetry in English. Held annually, winners receive $2000 and a reading tour of Florida colleges and universities.
Robin Beth Schaer is the 2014 prize winner with her first book of poetry Shipbreaking. Her work has also appeared in Tin House, Bomb Magazine, Paris Review, Denver Quarterly, Washington Square, and Guernica, among others.
From Schaer’s website: “Shipbreaking charts a beautiful and dangerous journey. It is an intimate and interstellar odyssey where seas rise, mastodons roam, aeronauts float overhead, bodies electrify, and a child is born as a ship wrecks in a hurricane. The speaker here is curious and fierce, consulting scientists, philosophers, ancient maps, fossil bones, and lovers in order to survive and understand the strange majesty of living. With empathy and exaltation, the poems collapse the distance between natural disasters and human struggles, interweaving relationships between the upheavals and renewals that both the heart and Earth undergo.”
Shipbreaking will be published this August.
The Magic Laundry, by Jacob M. Appel won last year’s Serena McDonald Kennedy Prize from Snake~Nation~Press.
From the editors: “Jacob Appel’s fiction book, The Magic Laundry, is superbly written with that quirky quality that lets the reader know that somehow Mr. Appel has experienced something close to what he’s written about. Love of children and spouses and acquaintances in all their beauty and irrationality is depicted with an eye to what makes them lovable and yet hard to understand.”
To get your own copy of The Magic Laundry, check out the press’s website.
The Greensboro Review Spring 2015 issue (97) includes the winners of their annual Robert Watson Literary Prize:
Fiction
Leigh Camacho Rourks [pictured], “Pinched Magnolias”
Poetry
Juliana Daugherty, “Aubade”
Each winner receives $1000 plus publication. The deadline for this year’s contest is September 15, 2015. The entry fee includes a one-year subscription to the publication. See the publication’s website for more details.
Pulp Literature Spring 2015 features the winner of the 2014 Raven Short Story Contest, “The Inner Light” by Krista Wallace. The editors comment that this story is “a chilling tale of the theatre, and the sacrifices made for art.” The story is followed by an interview with the author in which Wallace comments on places to find humor in writing, how her winning story came to be, current works in process, and advice for writers.
Trouble Sleeping by Abdul Ali, winner of the 2014 New Issues Prize, was published this past March.
From the foreword, written by Thomas Sayers Ellis: “Like a projection of testimony, like the shadows that run-off from the plan-projector-tation immediately after you’ve lived and left the theater, like the dark figures moving through the haunted noirs of Aaron Douglas, the widescreen stare of Trouble Sleeping is a mighty mise-en-concern.”
Ali’s poems have previously appeared in Gargoyle, A Gathering of Tribes, and New Contrast, among others. To learn more about Trouble Sleeping, check out the New Issues website.
Heavy Feather Review 4.1 includes the winning entry of the publication’s annual chapbook contest, Facts About Snakes & Hearts by Flower Conroy. Judge Kristina Marie Darling, author of The Arctic Circle, had this to say about the winning entry: “Formally dexterous and luminous in its imagery, Flower Conroy’s Facts about Snakes & Hearts skillfully situates the age-old tradition of the love lyric in a postmodern literary landscape. Presenting us with ‘flames,’ ‘a wishing bell,’ and ‘a brass bed made of not,’ Conroy shows us ‘how longing is mapped,’ restoring a sense of wonder to a familiar narrative arc. She offers us poems that are as sure of their singular voice as they are diverse in style and metaphor. This is an accomplished sequence and Flower Conroy is a writer to watch.”
Crazyhorse Spring 2015 includes the winner and runners-up of the publication’s Crazy Shorts! Short-Short Fiction Contest:
Winner
Emily Pease [pictured], “Foods of the Bible”
Runners-Up
Landon Houle, “The Exterminator”
Caitlin Scarano, “Sick Day”
Lee Conell, “Matt’s Comics”
The deadline for this annual contest is July 31 and the entry fee includes a subscription to the magazine. In addition to publication, the first-place winner receives $1000.
The Iowa Review 45.1 features winners and runners-up of their second Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans writing contest, judged by Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead and former U.S. Marine. This creative writing contest for U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel is hosted by The Iowa Review and made possible by a gift from the family of Jeff Sharlet (1942–69), a Vietnam veteran and antiwar writer and activist. The contest is open to veterans and active duty personnel writing in any genre and about any subject matter.
First Place ($1000)
Katherine Schifani, “Pistol Whip” (nonfiction)
Second Place ($750)
Brian Van Reet, “The Chaff” (fiction)
Runners-up ($500)
Terry Hertzler (poetry)
M.E. Hope (poetry)
James Walley (fiction)
The issue also includes two photo essay features, Stacy L. Pearsall Veterans Portrait Project and Mary F. Calvert The Battle Within: Sexual Assault in America’s Military. Both are exceptional contributions to our culture’s understanding of military community and the effects of foreign war and domestic violence.
The winner of Ruminate‘s 2015 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, judged by Laryy Woiwode, “Nesting Doll” by Tori Malcangio, appears in the Spring 2015 issue.
Read more here about Malcangio, Woiwode’s comments on the winning entry, and the second place, honorable mention, and runners up.
Winner of The 2014 Green Rose Prize from New Issues, My Multiverse by Kathleen Halme was published last month. The Green Rose Prize is awarded to poets who already have published one or more full-length collections of poetry.
Of the new collection, poet John Brehm says, “In poems that are both intricate and expansive, Kathleen Halme’s My Multiverse takes readers from the City of Roses, with its Shanghai traps and tunnels, to a hummingbird ‘tracing the missing shape of a feed,’ to the neural pathways of the mind itself. These poems do what all great poems do: they make the world seem strange again, shimmering with questions, ‘the mirror ball of meaning strung without a thread.’”
“Eleven Stories of Water and Stone” by Aurvi Sharma is the winner of the 2014 Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest, selected by judge Judith Ortiz Cofer.
Sharma’s essay is featured in the Spring 2015 issue of Prairie Schooner print edition and can also be read full-text online here.
Each year from May 1 to August 1, Prairie Schooner accepts submissions to the Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, open to all types of creative nonfiction essays, up to 5,000 words. The entry fee is $18 and gets entrants a one-year subscription to the publication. Winner receives $250 and publication in the following Spring issue. See more specific guidelines here.
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.
1st place goes to Lillian Li of Ann Arbor, MI [Photo credit: Christopher Wang]. She wins $1500 for “Parts of Summer” and her story will be published in Issue 96 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be her first print publication.
2nd place goes to Alex Wilson of Cardiff, CA. He wins $500 for “I Come from Killers.”
3rd place goes to Camille Baptista of New York, NY. She wins $300 for “Hide and Seek and Hide.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching for the Very Short Fiction Award: April 30
This competition is held quarterly, and 1st place wins $1500, publication in the journal, and 20 copies of that issue. It’s open to all writers, with no theme restrictions, and the word count must not exceed 3000. Click here for complete guidelines.
In his debut collection, Matthew Siegel explores his body’s fight with Crohn’s Disease and the struggle to remain one’s self in the face of illness. Winner of the University of Wisconsin Press’s 2015 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, Blood Work was selected by Lucia Perillo. About her selection, Perillo states, “These poems resist the dualities of lyric versus narrative, confessional versus impersonal, real against surreal, formal/improvisational, comic/sad. Matthew Siegel manages to tick off all the boxes at once, while remaining compulsively readable. The trick that he’s pulled off is to make a book that simultaneously tickles you and shakes you by the scruff of your neck.”
Siegel’s writing has appeared in Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Tusculum Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Blood Work was released March 12, 2015.
Editor Stephen Corey opens the Spring 2015 issue of The Georgia Review commenting on Erin Adair-Hodges, whose work “Of Yalta” won the 2014 Loraine Williams / Georgia Review Poetry Prize:
“The pleasant kicker for us here in the Review office came after we contacted Adair-Hodges last August to apprise her of the good news, and she wrote back to say we had just given her the first poetry acceptance of her writing career. (Three resulting side notes: newer writers, take heart in the democracy of our evaluation process; veteran writers, take the same; . . . )” The third note: The third annual contest is open to submisisons until May 15. See full guidelines here.
Press 53 has awarded Rebecca Foust the winner of the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Paradise Drive, chosen by Tom Lombardo. Of his selection, he says, “Rebecca Foust has created a Pilgrim who leads us from the hardscrabble existence and despair of Altoona, Pennsylvania, where she was raised, to the ultra-wealth and despair of Marin County, California, where she lived in the first decade of this century. The poems of Paradise Drive are powerful and figurative, with a very strong voice. Though the judging was close for this contest, Foust clearly stood out among the excellent finalists.”
Foust was also the recipient of the 2008 Many Mountain Press Poetry Book Prize for All that Gorgeous Pitiless Song, the winner of the 2010 Foreword Book of the Year Award with God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World, and the winner of Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook prizes in 2007 and 2008 with her two chapbooks Mom’s Canoe and Dark Card.
Paradise Drive will be released at the end of the month. For more information or to order a copy, check out the Press 53 website.
NANO Fiction 8.2 features this year’s winner of the 2014 NANO Prize selected by Kim Chinquee.
Jasmine Sawers piece “The Weight of the Moon” was chosen, as Chinquee notes, beecause “This piece represents, to me, what it means to be in love. So in love that one wants to capture the being one’s in love with and keep it to one’s self. Not realizing, at first, that this may produce harm. Ultimately this piece renders, to me, one’s growth, the grief in letting go, and what a love that is in itself.”
This is an annual contest which awards $1,000 for a previously unpublished work of fiction 300 words or fewer. This year’s contest will be judged by Amber Sparks. All entrants will receive a one-year subscription to NANO Fiction. Deadline: September 1, 2015. See full guidelines here.
Black Warrior Review issue 40.2 featurs the winners and runners-up of their 10th Annual Contest in Prose, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Each winner received $1,000 and publication, and for the first time, each runner-up received $100.
Fiction Contest judged by Judge Lily Hoang
First Place: Michael Mau, “Little Bird”
Runner Up: Elise Winn, “Brother and Sister”
Poetry Contet judged by Richard Siken
First Place: Curtis Rogers, “Of Plenty”
Runner Up: Emily Skaja, “Self-Portrait with Hawk & Armada”
Nonfiction Contest judged by Kiese Laymon
First Place: Landon Houle, “Bigfoot, Bum Foot, Barbie: Strange But True at the Yahoo Freak Show”
Runner Up: Chelsey Clammer Kiese, “Mother Tongue”
Click here for judges’ comments and a full list of finalists.
Issue 93 of River Styx features the winners of their 2014 International Poetry Contest. Their editorial panel selected a number of poems to send to this year’s final judge, poet Joan Murray [pictured], who selected the winners:
1st Place
Adam Scheffler, “Contemporaries”
Murray’s comment: “It’s a very accomplished accretive poem that pays off our anticipation with specifics and surprises, and lets us chuckle right through the inevitable.”
2nd Place
Brian Patrick Heston, “Overtime”
Murray’s commen: “It’s a jewel-like yet gritty poem that lifts a dark moment to the light and pulls us inside with curiosity, reluctance, and empathy.”
3rd Place
Suzanne Cleary, “Making Love While Watching a Documentary on Lewis and Clark”
Murray’s commen: “It’s an appealingly drowsy meditation on expectation, imagination, and disappointment—in history, on TV, and in bed.”
Honorable Mention
Myra Shapiro, “Put the Kettle On”
Established in 1915, frist as The Texas Review at the University ot Texas at Austin, Southwest Review, now of Southern Methodist University, celebrates 100 years of publishing. As critic Edmund Grosse said in the inagural issue of the publication, the magazine has proven his prediction that it would “uphold the banner of scholarly elegance” and “stoop to no word unworthy of the Muses.”
Under the editorial guidance of Willard Spiegelman since 1984 (when the editorial responsibility was returned to a faculty member for the first time in forty years), Southwest Review has emerged as “one of the best literary quarterlies in the United Sates,” according to PEN American Center. Having won the PEN Nora Magid Award for Literary Editing in 2005, Spiegelman and his editorial staff have shown a true lifetime commitment to publishing “luminous and unfamiliar names, so long as the writing is genuine.”
Also featured in this anniversary issue are the 2014 Morton Marr Poetry Prize Winners. This year’s judge was Elizabeth Spires.
First Place Kyle Norwood “Landscape with Fountain and Language”
Second Place Lisa Rosenberg “To the Makers”
Second Place David Landon “Ash Wednesday: Coffee At Starbucks”