The most recent issue of Big Fiction (No. 6) features the winners of the 2014 Knickerbocker Prize, selected by David James Poissant. Poissnat provides an introduction to the winners: Alan Sincic, first place for his novella “The Babe” and Margaret Luongo, second place for her novella “Three Portraits of Elaine Shapiro.”
Big Fiction publishes long-form fiction in a twice yearly print publication, paying $100 and six copies for selected works, and $500/$250 +publication for contest winners.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their June Fiction Open competition. This competition is held twice a year. Stories generally range from 2000-6000 words, though up to 20,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in June. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Michael Varga [pictured, of Norcross, GA, wins $2500 for “Chad Erupts in Strife.” His story will be published in Issue 95 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first off-campus fiction in print.
Second place: Dana Kroos, of Houston, TX, wins $1000 for “These Things.”
Third place: Christine Breede-Schechter, of Geneva, Switzerland, wins $600 for “Goodbye to All That (Or Not).”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here. Deadline soon approaching – Short Story Award for New Writers: August 31.
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 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories. Second/third: $500/$300 and consideration for publication. Click here for complete guidelines.
Michael Bazzett, winner of the Milkweed Editions 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, will have his collection of poems, You Must Remember This, published in November 2014. Pre-orders at a reduced price are being taken now on the Milkweed website. Bazzett will be reading at the Minneapolis Central Library on November 11 at 7:00 pm.
Beecher‘s Spring 2014 issue publishes the winners of their recent contests in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction:
Poetry Contest Winner, selected by Frank X. Walker
Roy Beckemeyer’s “Tree Shadows“
“tree shadows
angle
their skeletal souls
like Chinese
script….”
Nonfiction Contest Winner, selected by Eula Biss
Anne Penniston Grunsted’s “The Art of Not Turning Away”
“My five-year-old son Bobby has terrible, all-consuming anxiety at the doctor’s office. Any doctor can trigger him—his doctor, my doctor, a vet. As soon as he realizes where he is, he starts to retch. I hold him. I distract him. I gently whisper calm assurances. His service dog sits near, providing comfort the best he can. Nothing, really, helps. We just wait together for the anxiety to pass…”
Fiction Contest Winner, selected Manuel Munoz
Penny Perkins’s “Car Ride Through Corn Fields (1975)”
“She is sitting in the backseat of the family station wagon. Her father is driving an scratching himself. Her mother is in the front seat next to her father, wearing sunglasses over puffy, red-stained eyes and looking straight ahead at the lonely two-lane highway that stretches out before them on the flat, Midwestern plain. She is a child, almost a teenager. She is the almost-teenager child of her parents and there is no escaping that oppressive fact. Even now, especially now, here on a teary Sunday afternoon drive.
The Summer 2014 issue of Geist magazine features the winners of the 10th Annual Geist Literary Postcard Story Contest:
First Prize
“Nettie, Rose, Daphne and Ginger” by James MacSwain
Second Prize
“Do You Have a Lighter” by Erin Kirsh
Third Prize
“Sand” by D. M. Long
The latest issue of The Malahat Review features the winner of the Novella Prize, Dora Dueck with “Mask.” Here’s a snippet from the beginning:
I was fourteen before I saw my father’s face. The ruins, I mean, the face behind the mask. Holes instead of a cheekbone to cheekbone, though the tip had been spared and stood there by itself, pale and hideous, as if too stubborn or stupid to quit when abandoned. Nostrils like tiny arches. And where his right eye should have been, he had a crater too.
I’d needed pins for my hair. I’d hurried into Mum’s room, hurried out again, and his door had slipped ajar. The morning sun, which he got through his east-facing window, was escaping in a strong white shaft like a barrier thrown up in the dim grey corridor. He was framed by it, and he was humming. For the one you love so well, Dolly Gray, in the midst of battle fell, Dolly Gray…
It must have been the humming that confused me. That made me stop. Dad didn’t hum or sing; this was Mum’s department. She sang while preparing our breakfast and supper, and it was usually a hymn she warbled through until she had the biscuits in a pan, the eggs boiled, the cabbage or asparagus steamed. But sometimes she sang “Goodbye, Dolly Gray,” her favourite song from the days of the War, because her name was Dolly…
Ploughshares, based at Emerson College, is excited to announce the winners of the 2014 Emerging Writer’s Contest. The contest recognizes work by an emerging writer in each of three genres: poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. One writer in each genre receives $1,000 and publication in the Winter 2014 issue of Ploughshares. This year’s winners were Rosalie Moffett for her poems “Why Is It The More?,” “To Leave Through a Wall,” and “Hurricane 1989”; Elise Colette Goldbach for her nonfiction piece “In Memory of the Living”; and Tomiko Breland for her fiction piece “Rosalee Carrasco.”
The Baltimore Review editors have announced and congratulated the winners of their summer contest, the theme of which was “How To.” Judged by Michael Downs, the contest was open to poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction. The issue itself features this same theme. Here are the winners:
First Place
Diana Spechler’s “How to Love a Telemarketer”
Second Place
Ginny Hoyle’s “How to Breathe”
Third Place
Shirley Fergenson’s “How to Leave a Garden”
Congrats. Read the winning pieces and the complete issue online here, featuring Erika Kleinman, Evan Beaty, Douglas Cole, Meng Jin, Marjorie Stelmach, Carolyn Williams-Noren, Justin Brouckaert, James Norcliffe, and more.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their May 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 August. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
1st place goes to Caro Clark [pictured] of Wakefield, RI. She wins $1500 for “The Kind I Really Am” and her story will be published in Issue 94 of Glimmer Train Stories. This is Caro’s first published story.
2nd place goes to Robert Kirkbride of Chicago, IL. He wins $500 for “These Things.”
3rd place goes to Gaetan Sgro of Chicago, IL. He wins $300 for “We Are All Snowflakes and Cities.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching! Very Short Fiction Award: July 31
This competition is held quarterly, and 1st place has been increased to $1500 plus publication in the journal. It’s open to all writers, with no theme restrictions, and the word count must not exceed 3000. Click here for complete guidelines.
Big Muddy opens Volume 14 Number 1 with the winners of the Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Award and the Mighty River Short Story Award. Here’s a glimpse of each:
Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Award
Robert Garner McBrearty’s “What Happened to Laura?”
I’m in a coffee shop on an afternoon in spring when a man at a table near the creamers picks up his smart phone and says in a loud voice, “John? Doug here. Laura is back. She’s pissed off. She’s a really pissed off person…I don’t know what she’s pissed off about…Yeah, that’s right…I’m taking her to the doctor today…It’s a hard call, they might…That’s good, that’s good…She’s real angry, she’s real brutal, she’s real cutting…Yeah, that’s right…I don’t know if I’m going to have to hospitalize her or not…It’s brutal, it’s real brutal, I’ll call you after we see the doctor…Okay, thanks, right…That’s good.”
Doug signs off. But he’s back on a moment later. “Bob? Doug here. Laura came back…Well, she’s pissed off, she’s real pissed off…That’s good, that’s good…Well, she’s real pissed off…We’re going to see the doctor in about twenty minutes…Obviously…Excellent…Good idea…I’ll hide everything…”
He hangs up. We all look up from our tables to meet his widened eyes. A tall man rises up. He points a finger at Doug’s chest. “I want to know what’s wrong with Laura,” he says.
Mighty River Short Story Contest
Catherine Browder’s “The Canine Cure”
Some days there’s a bit of a flurry when I step on the elevator with the girls. Lola takes the lead, followed by Rusty, and then Didi. I bring up the rear. As we assemble inside, an orderly wearing hospital scrubs pulls himself up to his considerable height and scowls, never taking his eyes off my trio. A young Asian woman in a lab coat takes a small step back. I raise a finger. My three promptly sit, and I punch the button for the third floor.
“Believe it or not,” I tell my audience, “these girls are here to work.” I give them my broadest professional smile. The man cracks a joke while the young woman titters uncomfortable. Neither has noticeably relaxed. The girls remain seated, their great brown eyes traveling from face to face and then back to mine. In the enterprise that looms ahead I am certain of only one thing: My troupe is obedient and well trained.
The current issue of The Cincinnati Review features a special section for the winners of the Robert and Adele Schiff Awards in prose and poetry. There is no commentary on the pieces, so you’ll have to figure out why they won for yourself! Here is the opening of each:
Karrie Higgins’s “The Bottle City of God”
My first summer in Zion, the Mormons deliver a latter-day miracle.
A grasshopper plague is encroaching on a town somewhere out there in the vast Utah emptiness, on the other side of the Great Salt Lake: two thousand grasshopper eggs to the square foot, little exoskeletons bursting into being from thin air, like popcorn kernels on a hot burner.
Local News Channel 4 bears witness: Every ten years, the grasshoppers come. Like clockwork.
As an outsider, a Gentile, I have made this reporter my hierophant. The Mormons have their Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and I have a newsman. I never watched local news before moving here.
The plague is supposed to happen.
Backyards are popcorn machines, pop, pop, pop.
Insecticide has failed us.
Martha Silano’s “The World”
The world so big, so big and beyond, tumbleweed so turbulent in the wind,
the cormorants of the world so sunning themselves on shit-stained piers.
World a big son with his big-boy accretion, his magnesium need
for the screen, for his Xbox lithosphere. The world and the calderas
of the world and the peaks of the world with their toothsome fissures
toppling the calm. The world with its spiral notebook of incomprehensible
Passages North showcases the winners of their 2013 contests in the 2014 issue, out now:
Thomas J. Hruska Memorial Nonfiction Prize
judged by Elena Passarello
Winner
Brandon Davis Jennings: “I Am the Pulverizer”
Honorable Mentions
Christiana Louisa Langenberg: “Foiled”
Sidony O’Neal: “Timely Reflections on the Death of Emergency”
Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize
judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Winner
Vandana Khanna: “Prayer to Recognize the Body”
Honorable Mention
T.J. Sandella: “My Mother Prepares Me for Her Death”
Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters Fiction Contest
judged by Caitlin Horrocks
Winner
Joe Sacksteder: “Earshot—Grope—Cessation”
In each issue of Frogpond, the Haiku Society of America honors one previously unpublished work from the previous issue and awards the writer with $100. In the current issue (37.2) they award Anne L.B. Davidson (piece published in 37.1):
air show . . .
the ice cream girls
compare nail polish
The Claremont Review (Canada), publishing young writers age 13-19 years old since 1992, has announced the winners of their Annual Writing Contest. Judged by Jay Ruzesky, Susan Gee, and Beth Kope, the following winners will have their works published in the fall 2014 issue
Poetry Award Winners
First Place: “Sketches of a Green Card in Arizona” by Talin Tahajian
Second Place: “Zeng Xiangshu, the East is Red” by Cecilia Shang
Third Place : “Coterie” by Levi Supowitz
Honorable Mention: “Moving Day” by Emily Sun
Fiction Award Winners
First Place: “Planting Hope” by Katie McLean
Second Place: “Strangers” by Julie Chung
Third Place: “Darjeeling” by Allison Kiang
Honorable Mention: “Anna” by Simeon Alojipan
Élan, the international student literary magazine and a publication of the Creative Writing department at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, has published the winners of their annual writing and art contest in the 2014 issue now available online (Issuu). The Élan contest finalists are:
Writing
Winner: Aletheia Wang Finalists: Gina Olson, Grace Green, Tatiana Saleh, Steven Adams
River Styx received close to 300 submissions for their eighth annual Schlafly Beer Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Contest. “We thought the overall quality of manuscripts was exceptionally high,” the editors write. The top three winners are featured in the latest issue of the magazine (39th Anniversary Issue: “Because who wants to turn 40?”)
First Place
Doug Crandell, “Dangerous to Inhale”
“The state park cannot be named. If it is, you’ll know where this happened, and if that were the case, he might come back and get me. I don’t want that. Yes, he’s dead, but one thing you’ll find out is that the dead are never really gone here. He gets to go wherever he wants, the Magic Marker Man, that is…”
Second Place
Landon Houle, “Right to the Bones, Right to the Marrow”
“My mother texts me, says, Lisa lost the baby again. I don’t think about it at the time. At the time, I’m in the bathtub, and I’m getting my phone all wet and soapy, and to my credit, I’m not thinking about electronics and water or the manner of my mother’s message. To my credit, I’m thinking of my cousin Lisa, and I type back, Oh no! …”
Third Place
John Hearn, “Billy”
“He told me he remembered the day his parents brought Billy home from Union Hospital, the day he met his sixth sibling. The christening, too, with the Boston relatives crowding the apartment early that Sunday morning, the adults dressed in their church clothes, baby Billy in a christening gown brought by his aunt Madeline. In the apartment, just minutes before the ceremony, a discussion continued over what to name him..”
The latest issue of Mississippi Review features the winners of the 2014 Contests. Winners received publication and $1,000.
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the fiction prize winner. Here is how her piece starts: “When she heard the blind girl was coming to spend mornings at the normal school, Jill suspected they’d stick her in the desk next to hers. She had the best grades and the fewest friends, a combo that made her uniquely qualified to keep company with a cripple.”
And Harold Whit Williams won the poetry prize with “Blue Dreams” which starts:
At this juncture the river is too wide,
Too swift and too strong. A bottleneck
Slide scraped along taut catgut strings
That sing and moan like a crop-beaten
Beast of burden. Cry gee, then cry haw.
Cry over evil deeds done at midnight.
Holler sweet Lucifer back in his hole.
What a sight! This old muddy flooding
Fields, lapping the levee. I’ll get there
Somehow, someway, and on that day
You’ll be sorry you’ve done me wrong.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their April 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 goes to Julian Zabalbeascoa [pictured] of Boston, MA, wins $1500 for “Gernika.” His story will be published in Issue 94 of Glimmer Train Stories.
Second place goes to David Abrams of Butte, MT, wins $500 for “A Little Bit of Everything.”
Third place goes to Meghan Pipe of Minneapolis, MN, wins $300 for “Contingencies.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching! 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 – 8000, though up to 20,000 is fine. Click here for complete guidelines.
The latest issue of Freefall features the winners of the 2013 Annual Prose & Poetry Contest, judged this year by Marina Endicott.
Poetry
1st Place: Marlene Grand Maitre “Slip the Knot”
2nd Place: Patricia Young “Too Many Guns in the House”
3rd Place: Patricia Young “Puzzle”
Honourable Mentions:
Cassy Welburn “A Kindness of Bees”
Wendy Donawa “About the Snow Queen: A Question for Hans Christian Anderson”
Alec Whitford “Nameless Creek”
Prose
1st Place: Hermine Robinson “Tipping House”
2nd Place: Paddy Scott “The Bull of Heaven”
3rd Place: Theanna Bischoff “Pear”
“Our contest winners feature powerful writing about the vulnerability of migrant women in foreign lands; transgendered characters trying to find their place in society; family and motherhood, and the gut-wrenching experience that happens with it all falls apart and when the pieces are put back together,” writes Room Editor Amy McCall in the latest issue. The judges of the 2013 Contests were Yasuko Thanh (fiction), Jane Munro (poetry), and Betsy Warland (creative non-fiction).
Fiction
1st Place: “Essence” by Carol Lazare, Toronto, ON
2nd Place: “Totem” by Katherine Sinclair, Markham, ON
Honourable Mention: “Wishweeds” by Jess Taylor, Toronto, ON
Poetry
1st Place: “liquidation of the ashettes” by Karen Sylvia Rockwell, Belle River, ON
2nd Place: “Lovenoise: an eviction in parts” by Megan Hyska, Port Moody, BC
Honourable Mention: “leaving 7516 tronson” by Lyndsay Thornton, Vernon, BC
Creative Non-Fiction
1st Place: “Writing, in transit” by Najwa Ali, Toronto, ON
2nd Place: “Under the Skin” by Nicola Harwood, Vancouver, BC
Honourable Mention (tie): “Doppelganger” by Paula Freed, Sea Bright, NJ
Honourable Mention (tie): “The Good News” by Veronica Fredericks, Toronto, ON
View the shortlist entrants by genre here.
Bellingham Review is pleased to announce the winners from their 2014 Contests:
Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction
Final Judge: Joy Castro
First Place
Michael Palmer, “A Glossary of West Texas”
Runner Up
Whitney Templeton, “Body Cavities”
Finalists
Rebecca Bald, Sonja Livingston, Jericho Parms, Allie Rowbottom, Julie Wittes Schlack, Maya Jewell Zeller
49th Parallel Award for Poetry
Final Judge: Kathleen Flenniken
First Place
Jackleen Holton, “Goldfish”
Finalists
Leslie Marie Aguilar, C. Wade Bentley, Cathleen Chambless, Lynn Deming, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Rebecca Foust, Jenny Grassl, Amy Greacan, Kathleen McClung, Arlene Naganawa, Nathan Renie, Tobias Wray
The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction
Final Judge: Shawn Wong
First Place
Tom Howard, “Temple and Vine”
Finalists
Noelle Catharine Allen, Amina Gautier, Patricia Schultheis, Britt Tisdale
The Rising Phoenix Contest occurs with each spring issue of The Sheepshead Review. This year, they stepped up the game a little bit and had the students send in a six-piece portfolio for review for the art portion, giving them the opportunity for six pieces to be published, “a larger amount of pieces than is typically presented by one student.” The judge this year was Jon Crispin, along with new judges Saul Lemerond (fiction), Sarah Gilbert (poetry), and David McGlynn (nonfiction). Here are the winners:
Art
Laura Wire: Piet’s Orange Peel
Fiction
Sarah Chayer: “The Breaking Breath”
Poetry
Cole Heyn: “Rail-Splitters”
Nonfiction
Andrea Reisenauer: “The Solo Journey”
Mid-American Review publishes the winners of the 2013-2014 James Wright Poetry Award and the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award in the latest issue:
James Wright Poetry Award
Winner
Jude Nutter: “The Shipping Forecast
Runner-Up
Cate Lycurgus: “[It wasn’t a fast break]”
Finalists
Carol V. Davis: “The Autopsy, a Love Poem”
Nate Liederbach: “Siege”
Janet Smith: “To Do List”
Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award
Winner
Gabriel Houck: “Hero’s Theater”
Runner-Up
Dana Fitz Gale: “Cousin”
Editor’s Choice
Courtney Craggett: “Kansas Before Oz”
Robert Coover was the final judge for the 2013 Barthelme Prizes, hosted by Gulf Coast. “All three of these stories echo Donald Barthelme’s brevity, concision, and wry intelligence, his gift for memorable one-liners,” he writes in the latest issue which features the winners. “Notoriously withering as his critiques could be, he would have loved all the first and last sentences here, and would have said so. . . Though all these stories are deserving of prizes and publication, ‘Bats’ in particular, with its commonsensical women of Northwest Ohio dreaming the winged dreams of the bats hiding upside down in their purses, perhaps best exemplifies Barthelme’s poignant whimsy, his playful collaging of artful irrealism with the commonplaces of the quotidian.”
Winner
Lawrence Coates: “Bats”
Honorable Mentions
Colin Winnette: “Cement Man”
Ana Reyes: “At the Edge of the Kitchen’s Light”
The Tusculum Review is proud to announce the winners of their 2014 prizes, included within the Volume 10, 2014 issue. Winners received $1,000 and publication.
2014 Tusculum Review Fiction Prize
Sara Pritchard, Final Judge
John Blair: “Biggest Snake in the Woods”
2014 Tusculum Review Poetry Prize
Jericho Brown, Final Judge
Winner
Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow: “The Timekeeper”
Finalists
Gail Giewont: “Identifying Angels”
Jed Myers: “Comfort”
Chris Vogt-Hennessy: “Requiem for Monogamy”
Visit the magazine’s website to read more about the judges and order an issue to read the pieces.
This year’s print edition of Booth includes the winners of the 2013 Booth Story Prize, judged by Roxane Gay. The first prize winner won $1,000 and second prize got $250.
First Prize
“Real Family” by Lenore Myka
Second Prize
“Little Miss Bird-in-Hand” by Annie Bilancini
Shortlist
“Some Helpful Background for the Incoming Tenant” by Jacob Appel
“Their Own Resolution” by David Armstrong (story withdrawn by the author)
“Little Miss Bird-in-Hand” by Annie Bilancini
“Plush” by Jennifer Caloyeras
“Real Family” by Lenore Myka
Wag’s Revue recently sent out a note to congratulate the winner of their winter contest: first, Benjamin Harnett for his essay “Ghosts and Empties”; second, poet Kathryn Hindenlang; and third, Robert Johnson for his short story “Pay the Fish Lady.”
These pieces will appear in Issue 18. Issue 17 is now available.
Only on their second issue of the revival of december, the editors publish the winners of their 2014 writing awards. The Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize was created “to recognize and honor the role played by Sherwin Jeffrey (S.J.) marks in establishing this magazine’s poetry aesthetic, which endures today.” Stephen Berg, founder of the American Poetry Review and close friend of Marks, served as the judge this year. “Berg made choices that Marks might easily have made himself. Both poems confront gritty realities of isolation and mortality, eschewing sentimentality while holding fast to notions of hope and determination.”
Winner
Greg Jensen: “Anybody Mentions the Pope”
Honorable Mention
Dina Elenbogen: “A New Year”
Finalists
Jack Anderson, David Clewell, Hannah Cohen, Michael Collins, Michelle Deatrick, Dina Elenbogen, Eric Greinek, Marcia Hurlow, Daisy Kincaid, Donald Levering, Moira Linehan, Colleen McElroy, Annette Opalczynski, Jill Osier, Frederick Pollack, Marcia Popp, Kathleen Tibetts, Kari Wergeland, Sarah Winn
The Curt Johnson Prose Awards in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction is named after Johnson who edited the magazine from 1962 until 2008. “He filled the magazine with the work of writers and artists he knew and those he’d never met, concentrating on work he felt deserved, even needed, to be heard.” Mary Helen Stefaniak served as the fiction judge this year and “adhered to values almost identical to those Johnson espoused over the years.” And William Kittridge judged the nonfiction, which both pieces he says are “studies in the ways we become emotionally isolated”
Fiction Winner
Jim Nichols: “Owls”
Fiction Honorable Mention
Michael Fertik: “Hunting in Nangarhar”
Creative Nonfiction Winner
Garet Lahvis: “NQR”
Creative Nonfiction Honorable Mention
Jenny McKeel: “Saigon”
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: Douglas W. Milliken [pictured], of Portland, ME, wins $1500 for “Blue of the World.” His story will be published in Issue 94 of Glimmer Train Stories.
Second place: Scott Gloden, of Chagrin Falls, OH, wins $500 for “What Is Louder.”
Third place: MK Hall, of Venice, CA, wins $300 for “Fortune & Riot.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching for Short Story Award for New Writers: May 31. 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 winners of the 12th Annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest have been announced and included in the Spring 2014 issue of Open Minds Quarterly. “The winning poems exhibit strength in imagery, attention to the sound of language, and left the readers with a sensation long after they were read.” The honorable mentions include “an echo” by Sophie Soil, “As She Gently Brushed My Hair” by Sandy Jeffs, “With a huge love shattering my heart” by Georgina Paul, and “Medicated” by Sandy Jeffs. Here are the winners along with a sample of their poetry:
First Place
“Quebec City” by Ashley Laframboise
Sitting in your warm apartment, with
snow falling outside frosty windows, you
are wearing purple leg warmers over blue jeans, and green
slippers that used to be your grandmother’s.
You are singing along to
French folk music I’ve never heard before, and lazily
sucking on an electronic cigarette that smells of
honey.
Second Place
“Airport, Heavy Water” by Tyler Gabrysh
Tiny moon shadows plop on my dash;
an orchestral pitter-patter
forming the dew we never see born
Maybe once this was enthralling;
now it’s a swirl of overtaxed night
and dilated mourning.
Third Place
“Waiting to be Found” by Aaron Simkin
The night the meaning dissolved, it was just for me the
heads turned in the cars as I ran from the neon green street signs
a doomed cipher roaming the barren Winnipeg winter night
a prisoner of the light,
bathing in a conspiracy of clues derived from the indelible public grain,
no movies on the marquee at Portage Place,
just question marks like silver lights clawing at the clouds,
The Spring 2014 issue of The Missouri Review features the winners of the 2013 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize:
Fiction
Melissa Yancy: “Consider this Case”
Essay
Dave Zoby: “Cafe Misfit”
Poetry
Kai Carlson-Wee: 5 poems
“Kai Carlson-Wee, focuses on the gritty, visceral details of growing up on the West Coast as two brothers scavenge grocery store Dumpsters, dead rats rot in an alley and a severed head is found in a playground,” writes Speer Morgan in the foreword. “Carlson-Wee expands moments of growing up into a larger contemplation of the human condition, including our desire for transcendence despite our physical limitations and time’s inevitable passing.”
The 2014 issue of The Briar Cliff Review marks another year for its contest winners. Here are the first prize winners with a short quote from their work (which can be found inside the issue):
Fiction Contest Winner
Leslie Kirk Campbell: “Thunder in Illinois”
“He’s not a gambler but he’s made his own secret bet. If he wins, he won’t need to go back to Bangkok. If he loses, well, his bag is still packed.
‘What did you say, Lenny?’
‘I said I can die as soon as I get more points that you, dear. And I’m a hair’s breadth away from that moment.'”
Nonfiction Contest Winner
JLSchneider: “Call Me T
The new Rhino announces and publishes the winners of their 2014 contests.
2014 Founders’ Prize
Winner
Jose Antonio Rodriguez – “Poem in honor of the one-year anniversary of my sister Aleida’s death, which is five days away”
Runners-up
MaryJo Thompson – “Body Breakers”
Adam Scheffler – “Americas”
2014 Editors’ Prizes
First Prize
Brandon Krieg – “Comedy of Mirrors”
Second Prize
P. Scott Cunningham – “Planet Earth”
Honorable Mentions
C. Ann Kodra – “Dowsing”
Octavio Quintanilla – “Tell Them Love is Found”
The Broadside Press annual Switcheroo poetry winner is “Disappear” by Philip Schaefer, whose work has been matched with the artwork “Another Portal” by Maura Cunningham. The broadside is available for free, full-color download from the Broadsided website. Public posting encouraged! Finalist “Before Man” by Lauren Wolk is also available for reading on the website.
The latest issue of Banipal features excerpts from the novels of the 2014 shortlist for The International Prize for Arabic Fiction:
Inaam Kachachi – Tashari
Abdelrahim Lahbibi – The Journeys of ’Abdi, known as Son of Al-Hamriyah
Khaled Khalifa – No Knives in this City’s Kitchens
Youssef Fadel – A Rare Blue Bird that Flies with Me
Ahmed Saadawi – Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Mourad – The Blue Elephant
Read more about the authors and the issue itself here.
Congratulations to all writers that have made The Masters Review 2014 Shortlist which honors the top 2% of all stories reviewed. “At this time our guest judge, Lev Grossman, is reviewing stories and will select the top ten to be published in our anthology,” write the editors of The Masters Review. The final announcement will be made no later than May 15.
“Fisherman’s Band-Aid” – Alexander Papoulias
“Lynx” – Alice Otto
“Bury Me” – Allegra Hyde
“Braids” – Amanda Pauley
“Finders Keepers” – Andrew Cothren
“The Turk” – Andrew MacDonald
“Picketers” – Blake Kimzey
“Cleaning Lessons” – Cannon Roberts
“Every Thing You Never Said” – Courtney Kersten
“Someone Else” – Diana Xin
“The Behemoth” – Drew Ciccolo
“Go Down, Diller” – Eric Howerton
“Whit Vickers, The Pitcher Who Lost His Stuff” – Ezra Carlsen
“Objects in Transit” – Heather Dundas
“We Welcome All Sorts” – Heather Lefebvre
“Moonshot, 2003” – Jake Wolff
“Magicicada” – Jeffrey Otte
“County Maps” – Joe Worthen
“Tiny Little Teeth” – Justine McNulty
“dissolving newspaper, fermenting leaves” – Kiik AK
“Parade” – Laura Willwerth
“Lullwater” – Lena Valencia
“Strange Trajectories” – Lindsay D’Andrea
“Rivers” – Liz Knight
“Contrition” – Mallory McMahon
“Custody” – Maya Perez
“Electronic Heads” – Meng Jin
“Birmingham Goddam” – Scott Latta
“OpFor (Oppositional Force)” – Shane Collins
“Allure of The Sea” – Tatyana Kagamas
To see this list and the honorable mentions, please click here.
The new (Spring 2014) issue of The Fiddlehead features the winners of its 23rd Annual Literary Contest:
Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize:
Kayla Czaga, “That Great Burgundy-Upholstered Beacon of Dependability”
Poetry Honourable Mentions:
Kyeren Regehr, “Dorm Room 214”
Maureen Hynes, “Stone Sonnet”
Short Ficiton First Prize:
Myler Wilkinson, “The Blood of Slaves”
Fiction Honourable Mention:
Jill Widner, “When Stars Fell Like Salt Before the Revolution”
Wayde Compton, “The Front: A Selected Reverse-Chronological Annotated Bibliography of the Vancouver Art Movement Known as ‘Rentalism,’ 2011-1984”
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 Melanie Lefkowitz of Ithaca, NY. [Photo credit: Chelsea Fausel.] She wins $1500 for “The Mango” and her story will be published in Issue 94 of Glimmer Train Stories. This is Melanie’s first fiction publication.
2nd place goes to Kathleen Boyle of San Francisco, CA. She wins $500 for “Burial Rites of Northern Italians.”
3rd place goes to Olivia Postelli of Ann Arbor, MI. She wins $300 for “In the Glow.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
The editors at The Asheville Poetry Review to announced the William Matthews Poetry Prize Recipients for 2014, judged by Billy Collins.
Bruce Sager, from Westminster, MD was awarded first prize for his poem, “The Lot of Stars,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in the 20th Anniversary issue of The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 21, Issue 24, 2014), which will be released in November, 2014
Second prize is awarded to T. J. Sandella, from Cleveland, OH, for his poem, “Flight.” He will receive $250, as well as publication.
Dave Seter, from Petaluma, CA, was the third prize recipient for his poem “What My Uncle Is Trying To Say,” and he will also be published in the next issue. All three authors will be featured at a reading in Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC this summer.
The 2013 Consequence Prize in Poetry was selected by Brian Turner and awarded to William Snyder. Snyder’s winning piece “They Give Me Money Near Karbala”is published in the current issue of Consequence (Spring 2014). Also included are the pieces by the finalists.
First Prize
William Snyder: “They Give Me Money Near Karbala”
Finalists
Heather Bell: “Decoding The Poem”
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach: “To the Women of Trabzon”
Aubrey Ryan: “Song”
Silent Anatomies by Monica Ong has been selected winner of the 2014 Kore Press First Book Award as selected by Joy Harjo. Fnalists were Sass Brown (Alexandria, Virginia) for USA-1000, and Jennifer Franklin (New York, New York) for Daughter.
Joy Harjo (2014 Gugenheim Fellow) said of the winning work, Silent Anatomies: “This is one of the most unique poetry collections. It’s a kind of graphic poetry book, but that’s not exactly it either. Poetry unfurls within, outside and through images. The images are stark representations that include bottles that have been excavated from a disappeared age, contemporary ultrasound images of a fetus, family photographs and charts. They establish stark bridges between ancestor and descendant time and presence.This collection is highly experimental and exciting.”
Monica Ong is a poet and artist dwelling in experimental spaces. She completed her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in Digital Media, and is also a Kundiman poetry fellow. Her work has been published in Seneca Review, Drunken Boat, Glassworks Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, and others. An exhibiting artist for over a decade, she draws from her professional design practice to innovate on the alchemy of text and image.
Bellevue Literary Review‘s latest issue (Spring 2014) features the winners of the 2014 BLR Prizes:
Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, selected by Nathan Englander
Winner: “Pediatricology” by Abby Horowitz
Honorable Mention: “Death Defiant Bomba or What to Wear When Your Boo Gets Cancer” by Lilliam Rivera
Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction, selected by Helen Benedict
Winner: “Forty-One Months” by William McGrath
Honorable Mention: “Double Exposure” by Elisha Waldman
Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry, selected by Tina Chang
Winner: “Chronic Care: ‘Broken Leg’ by Keith Carter, Photograph” by Laurie Clements Lambeth
Honorable Mention: “The Rules of Surgery” by Kristin Robertson
The issue also features fiction by Susan Bartlett, Sean Kevin Campbell, Lillian Huang Cummins, Soniya Greenfield, Abby Horowitz, D. Quentin Miller, Billy O’Callaghan, Lilliam Riverea, Pamela Ryder Jean-Marie Saporito, Sheena Suals, and Jessica Stults; nonfiction by Mary Arguelles, Will McGrath, Leslie Van Gelder, and Elisha Waldman; and poetry by Alison Bradford, Steven Cramer, Catherine Freeling, Rachel Hadas, Kip Irwin, Will Johnston, Laurie Clements Lambeth, Laura Lauth, Michal Lemberger, Kaitlin LaMoine Martin, Marty McConnell, Thomas R. Moore, Jennifer Perrine, Kristin Robertson, Avery Leigh Thomas, Amy Tudor, Kathryn Weld, and Stacia Gyrene Yearwood. See more information about the issue and contest winners here.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their January Very Short Fiction competition. This quarterly competition is open to all writers for stories with a word count not exceeding 3000. No theme restrictions. The next Very Short Fiction competition will take place in April. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Lee Montgomery [pictured], of Portland, OR, wins $1500 for “Window.” Her story will be published in Issue 93 of Glimmer Train Stories.
Second place: Calvin Haul, of Salt Lake City, UT, wins $500 for “The World Within Reach.”
Third place: Auguste Budhram, of Austin, TX, wins $300 for “My Father’s Vacation.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
The Museum of Haiku Literature Award is award to the best previously unpublished work appearing in the previous issue of Frogpond, selected by the HSA Executive Committee. In Volume 37 Number 1, Tom Tico from San Fransisco, CA is announced of the winner of the $100 for this haiku (originally published in Volume 36 Number 3):
her letter . . .
I’d forgotten
paper can cut
In 2013, Unstuck magazine held a Flash Fiction Open Contest, judged by Amelia Gray. The winning results are featured in issue 4 (2014) of the magazine: Emily Kiernan’s “Palinopsia” and Dennis James Sweeney’s “When He Comes Home from the War.”
Gray writes this about Kiernan’s piece: “There are a few tricks here that might grow dull employed with a bigger word count … but which sparkle nicely in a piece of this length. This is bold and surprising short work, it is arresting, and proves to me that our subject can be well known, even a little quaintly known as a piece of culture … and fine work prevails to create a thing which is wholly new. Here also lies the first footnote I’ve liked outside of Infinite Jest, which frankly deserves its own sub-prize.”
And about Sweeney’s piece, she writes, “This is a lovely, efficient piece and perfectly presents outright danger in the post-trauma mundane. This is a story that I could spend hours going through with students were I not legally barred from interacting with young people.”
Congrats to the winners of the Ninth Annual Contest for Black Warrior Review, which are featured in the latest issue:
Fiction
Mari Christmas: “Baby”
Nonfiction
Meredith Clark: “Lyrebird”
Poetry
Hannah Aizenman: “History, or Umbilicus”
Finalists
Chad Brandon Anderson
Diana Arterian
Colin Bassett
Kelly Connor
Matthew Fee
Yanara Friedland
Maggie Glover and Isaac Pressnell
Lauren Hilger
Kristen Iskandrian
Sara Jaffe
Dong Li
Jacqueline Lyons
Cate Lycurgus
Emily Moore
Bruno Nelson
Leah Poole Osowski
Anne Ray
Allie Rowbottom
Jayme Russell
Brittney Scott
T.D. Storm
Shawn Wen
Naugatuck River Review‘s Winter 2014 issue features the winners of the 5th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest, judged by Susan Deer Cloud.
First Prize ($1000):
“Woodland Refuge” Margaret Bobalek King
Second Prize ($250):
“Christmas Eve 2011 After Taking Yu Troung to Radiation, Christmas Eve 2012 After Learning He Passed”
Lindsay Wilson
Third Prize ($100):
BLISS IN CAPETOWN, 1921 M.J. Oliver
Finalists
“Married but Separated: Prayer” Catherine Arra
“Digging Grave” Jerry Brunoe
“Last Chorus” Joanne Clarkson
“What Fernando Saw” Ben Gunsberg
“Fisherman’s Knot” Ross Howerton
“The Journey” Hayley Hughes
“Another Episode in the Annals of Shame” Lynne Knight
“Blue Balls” Raul Palma
“June First Matt Pasca
“Beets” Linda Neal Reising
“Hoarder” Val Dering Rojas
“Heartbroken Gorilla” Scott Ruescher
“Two Approaches to Gardening” David Sloan
“Bones” Dina Stander
“Uncle” Will Stockton
“UC Berkeley, Sproul Plaza, May 1969″ Joanna White
“In the Checkout Line at the Health Food Market” Claire Zoghb
To see a list of semi-finalists, click here.
Sponsored by the Hohenberg Foundation, the 2013 Pinch Literary Award Winners are featured in the Spring 2014 issue of The Pinch. Fiction was judged by Roxane Gay, poetry by Mark Jarman, and literary nonfiction by Abigal Thomas.
Winner in Literary Nonfiction
Molly Beer: “The Lifecycle of Butterflies”
Winner in Fiction
John Haggerty: “A Slight Chance of War”
Winner in Poetry
Ann Vermel: “Ripening”
The new, Winter 2014 issue of Grain Magazine features the winners in the poetry and fiction contests.
Fiction
judged by Stan Rogal
Winner
Dylan Levi King: “The 33 Transformation Bodies of the Bodhisattva Guanyin”
2nd Place Winner
Scott Bartlett: “The Proletarian”
3rd Place Winner
Seyward Goodhand: “We Harboured the Scholar”
Poetry
judged by M
Cream City Review‘s Poetry Prize was judged by Rebecca Hazelton and was awarded to Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, and the Fiction Prize was judged by Tom Williams and awarded to Lenore Myka. You can read them in Issue 37.1.
Hazelton writes, “In Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet’s poems, motherhood is a transformative and even at times frightening event, one that redefines the self and one that threatens to subsume it. Her lines, ranging from long and loping to brief, almost frantic reports, mimetically capture the infatuation and the exhaustion the mother in these poems feels for her child, and most poignantly, the difficulties of remaining a writer in those circumstances.”
Wiliams writes, “[Myka] seemed to never under write or over write or play coy. It maintains a magical combination of plot moves that unsettle and affirm. It answers questions just before the reader is prepared to ask them. And, to me, most importantly, its elements accrete in a way that establish this unassailable reality: the story is presented in the only way it could be told.