Hotel Amerika promotes itself as a publication for “writing in all its forms. . . traditional work alongside the experimental. We strive to house in our pages the most unique and provocative poetry, fiction and nonfiction available. Work with a quirky, unconventional edge—either in form or content—is often favored by our editors. Hotel Amerika is an eclectic journal that attracts an equally eclectic audience.” To that end, last year they held a Transgenre Writing Contest, the winners featured in their Spring 2016 issue.

1st Place
Sarah Minor, “Nest”

2nd Place
Dana Curtis​,​ ” Two Films”

Honorable Mention
​adrian nichols​,​ “lexicon of anarchy, no. xxii”​
Sophie Monatte​,​ “Fragments”

Other writers who works are included in the Transgenre section: Jessica Hollander, Julia Brennan, Katherine Riegel, Elizabeth Bryer, Lisa Samuels, Amy Newman, and Sara Biggs Chaney.

Southern Humanities Review 49.4 includes a special poetry section of the winners, runners-up, and finalists of their 2015 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize honoring Jake Adam York. In addition to publication, the winner, Mark Wagenaar [pictured] received $1,000 and travel to Auburn, Alabama in October 2015 to read his award-winning poems at the Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art alongside Richard Tillinghast, the final judge of the 2015 prize. This event kicked off the 2015 Auburn Writers Conference. The contest is held annually in honor of Jake Adam York, poet, fifth-generation Alabamian, and an undergraduate alum of Auburn University, whose works “examined race relations in the South, celebrating the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement and questioning, as a native son of the South, his own complicity in its tragedies.”

Winner
Mark Wagenaar

First Runner-up
Susan O’Dell Underwood

Second Runner-up
Doug Rutledge

Finalists
Mehul Bhagat
Ryan Black
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Meghan Dunn
Jennifer Givhan
Pamela Hart
Susanna Lang
Ansley Moon
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

Boulevard #94 features the winner for their 2015 Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers who has not yet published a book of fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction with a nationally distributed press. Joshua Idaszak’s “The Last Laz of Krypton” was awarded $1,500 and publication. Honorable Mention “Mrs. Lana Greer” by Chloe Packer is also included in this issue.

The August 2016 issue of Sonic Boom includes the winners of their second annual senryu contest selected by Judge Terri L. French from 123 participants from 27 countries.

First Place
Steve Hodge, USA

Second Place
Sidney Bending, Canada
​
Third Place
Chase Gagnon, USA
​
Honorable Mentions
Mohammad Azim Khan, Pakistan
Phyllis Lee, USA

All the winning entries as well as judge’s comments can be read here.

The Meadow 2016 Novella Prize winner is “The Spider” by Mark Brazaitis [pictured] and can be read both in the print issue as well as online. Brazaitis is the author of six books, including The Incurables: Stories, which won the 2012 Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction and the 2013 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. His latest book, Truth Poker: Stories, won the 2014 Autumn House Press Fiction Competition. The Meadow is the annual literary and arts journal of Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada.

The Malahat Review #195 features Anne Marie Todkill’s story “Next of Kin,” winner of the 2016 Novella Prize. Todkill’s entry was chosen from 225 submissions by three final judges: Mark Anthony Jarman, Stephen Marche, and Joan Thomas. She has been awarded $1,500 in prize money and publication.

Of “Next of Kin,” the judges said: “With its controlled reveal of complications, it has the drive of a mystery story—but the mystery under investigation is the intricacies of a family over time. Anne Marie Todkill is an accomplished writer, offering surprising and astute insights into the relationship between sisters. Her dialogue is sharp and she is especially incisive in writing about sex. Her narrator Marian speaks with a knowing voice, at odds with her ‘small life’; the things she withholds come to the reader as a series of small explosions. Todkill imposes no pattern over events and offers her characters no epiphanies. Instead, incidents refract off each other and the story speaks powerfully through its silences. Like all good novellas, ‘Next of Kin’ offers both the concentrated pleasures of a short story and the scope of a novel.”

Read an interview with the Anne Marie Todkill here.

This year’s winner of the Willow Springs Fiction is “Gorilla Love Story” by Chelsea Bryant. The award provides each entrant with a one-year subscription to the publication; the winner receives $2000 + publication in the annual June issue. Willow Springs offers some of their publication’s content for online reading along with comments from the author about the work.

[Cover image by Marta Berens from Dream Chapter]

The newest issue of Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose (Volume 15: 2016) contains nothing but the winners and runners up of their annual literary contest for 2016. Unique to this contest, once genre winners are selected for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, one author is awarded the Grand Prize overall with $1000 award.

This year’s Grand Prize winner was Anna Leahy’s essay “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.”

A complete list of authors as well as judge’s comments for each of the winners can be found here along with a link for information about the 2017 contest.

Issue 44 of Paterson Literary Review annual (2016-2017) features the winners and honorable mentions from their 2015 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards:

First Prize
Ann Clark, Dexter, NY, “Pretend” and Annie Lanzillotto, Yonkers, NY, “Diminished Capacity, an Indictment”

Second Prize
Lynne McEniry, Morristown, NJ, “Splinter”

Third Prize
Maxine Susman, Princeton, NJ, “Thirteen”

A full list of winners and honorable mentions as well as guidelines for this annual contest can be found here.

Every four months, Portable Stories holds a short story writing contest based on a theme. The winning story is then recorded by a narrator at CDM Sound Studios and posted online along with a behind-the-scenes video about the winning story. There is a $10 entry fee, and the winning author receives $250, or 75% of the proceeds generated from story submissions (whichever is greater). Listeners can download the story for free or make a contribution to one of several featured organizations.

“How You Like”, by Jari Chevalier [pictured], is the winning story for the inaugural Portable Stories contest theme: HUNGER. This story was performed by January LaVoy  and runs 23 minutes 52 seconds.

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their March/April Fiction Open competition. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers. Stories generally range from 3000-6000 words, though up to 24,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in July. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Taiyaba Husain [pictured], of Mumbai, India, wins $3000 for “How You Respond in an Emergency.” Her story will be published in Issue 99 or 100 of Glimmer Train Stories. This is Taiyaba’s very first published story!

Second place: Edward Porter, of Oakland, CA, wins $1000 for “Storm Dogs” and publication in a future issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Third place: Anne Vinsel, of Salt Lake City, UT, wins $600 for “Goyische Turkey with Post-its.”

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

Deadline soon approaching!
Short Story Award for New Writers: June 30
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 wins $2500 (increased from $1500!) and publication in Glimmer Train Stories. Second/third: $500/$300 and consideration for publication. Click here for complete guidelines.

Volume 26 of The Briar Cliff Review includes the winning entries from their 2015 annual writing contest.

Poetry Winner
“Midwinter, My Mother” by Laura Apol

Fiction Winner
“Thirty and Out” by S.J. MacLean

Nonfiction Winner
“On Kindness” by Laura S. Distelheim

In addition to publication in the gorgeous full-size format print copy – which includes full color art  throughout – winners receive $1000 each. This annual contest runs from August 1 – November 1 of each year.

The Spring/Summer 2016 issue of Black Warrior Review features the winners of the publication’s 11th Annual Contest in Prose, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Each winner received $1,000 and publication; each runner-up received $100.

Fiction judge Alissa Nutting selected “The Twins” by Jill Rosenberg as the winner and “Fellowship” by Kimberly Parsons as the runner up.

Poetry judge Heather Christle selected “b careful” by Mark Baumer as the winner and “Wolfmoon” by Mary-Alice Daniel as the runner-up.

Nonfiction judge Mary Roach selected “Huron River Drive” by Will McGrath as the winner and “Three Great Lyric Passages” by Hugh Martin as the runner up.

Judges’ comments on the winning works and a full list of all the finalists can be found here.

The Spring 2016 issue of The Bellingham Review features their 2015 literary contest winners.

Contest judge Bruce Beasley selected Ming Lauren Holden’s poem, “For My Aspirated,” as the recipient of the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry. Beasley said the poem “stunned me every time I reread it for its collision of mystery and absolute clarity . . . its insistent repetitions and piled-on rhetorical questions pounding against the unplumbable mysteries of loss.”

Eric Roe’s short story, “Notes From Lazarus,” earned the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Contest judge Kristiana Kahakauwila called the story, “a lovely meditation on love, devotion, and hope . . . finely crafted and controlled but never overwrought.”

S. Paola Antonetta, contest judge for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, described the pleasures of reading Leigh Claire Schmiddli’s work: “‘This Sonata, into the third movement’ is an essay that puns deeply to get at the deep truths of all those ways in which language, like life, evades our meanings for it. Divided, like a musical piece, into movements, ‘This Sonata’ evokes movement itself in all its forms . . . Piercingly lyric, haunting in its details.”

Winning entries for the 2106 Malahat Review Open Season Awards can be read in the newest issue (#194). Interviews with each of the winning authors can be found on The Malahat Review website.

Open Season Award for Poetry Winner
John Pass, “Margined Burying Beetle”

Open Season Award for Fiction Winner
Katherine Magyarody, “Goldhawk”

Open Season Award for Creative Nonfiction Winner
Jennifer Williamson, “Light Year”

The Malahat Review, Canada’s premier literary magazine, invites entries from Canadian, American, and overseas authors for their annual Open Season Awards, with a prize of $1500 in each of three marquee categories: poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their 2016 January/February Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held three times a year 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 is open now: Short Story Award for New Writers. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

1st place goes to Alex Jaros of Kansas City, MO [pictured], who wins $2500 for “The Southwest Chief.” His story will be published in Issue 99 of Glimmer Train Stories.

2nd place goes to Gabriel Houck of Lincoln, NE, for “A Working Theory of Stellar Collapse.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train, increasing his prize from $500 to $700.

3rd place goes to Sonia Feigelson of Brooklyn, NY. She wins $300 for “Easy, Exotic.”

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

The Spring issue of Bellevue Literary Journal features the winners of their 2016 BLR prizes:

Goldenberg Prize for Fiction judged by Paul Harding
Winner: “The Foreign Cinema” by Lauren Alwan
Honorable Mentions: “Are You Having Suicidal Thoughts?” by John Noonan, and “First Child, Second Place” by Marylin Warner

Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction judged by Mark Vonnegu
Winner: “Askew” by Esther K. Willison
Honorable Mention: “A Member of the Family” by Morgan Smith

Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry judged by Ada Limón
Winner: “The Problem With Anatomical Thinking—” by Meridian Johnson
Honorable Mention: “The Interview” by Kathryn Starbuck

Daniel Liebowitz Prize for Student Writing
Winner: “The Lump” by Susanna Nguy

The Southeast Review spring issue (34.1) is chock-full of finalists and winning contest entries from their 2015 season.

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

Winner:
C. A. Kaufman, “Akron, Ohio: 1933”

Finalists:
Amina Gautier, “Thankful Chinese”
Lewis Holt, “Manliness”
Ashton Russell, “We Don’t Talk About Ifs”
Ashley Shelby, “Liberation: Kuwait”
Michaella A. Thornton, “Man Lace”

SER Gearhart Poetry Contest
Judged by David Kirby

Winner:
Carolyn Moore, “The Teen Romances Her Razor”

Finalists:
Sarah Gordon, “Creases, Folds”
Tom Kelly, “Funeral Glam”
Rebecca Lauren, “Elegy for a Band Mother”
Ralph Sneeden, “Contrapunctus (#2)”
Arne Weingart, “Piecework”

SER Narrative Nonfiction Contest
Judged by Bob Shacochis

Winner:
Will McGrath, “Death of the Virgin”

Finalists:
Heather Corrigan, “Widmarked”
A. Sandosharaj, “Dead Bird Stories for Nonbelievers”

The 28th annual Publishing Triangle Awards were presented on April 21, 2016.

Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement
Eloise Klein Healy [pictured]

The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
Winner: A Poet of the Invisible World by Michael Golding (Picador)

Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
Winner: The Middle Notebookes by Nathanaël (Nightboat Books)

Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner: One Hundred Days of Rain by Carellin Brooks (BookThug)

The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Winner: “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy by Marcia M. Gallo (Cornell University Press)

The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Winners [tie]:
Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality by Michelangelo Signorile (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Winner: Chord by Rick Barot (Sarabande Books)

The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Winner: No Confession, No Mass by Jennifer Perrine (University of Nebraska Press)

For a full list of finalists and winners, visit the Publishing Triangle Awards website.

New Letters (v82 n2) features the winners of their 2015 Literary Awards:

The New Letters Prize for Poetry
Judge Ellen Bass
Five poems by Elizabeth Haukaas

The Alexander Cappon Prize for Fiction
Judge Jayne Anne Phillips
“A Tzaddikah Goes on the Lamb” by Cady Vishniac

The Dorothy Cappon Prize for Nonfiction Essay
Judge Floyd Skloot
“Our Little Jewish Girl” by Mindy Lewis

The contest deadline for this year is May 18, 2016 and awards a $1,500 prize for the winner in each category in addition to publication.

Passages North #37 showcases the winners of their 2015 contests:

2015 Thomas Hrushka Memorial Nonfiction Prize
Judge: Steven Church
Winner: Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, “On Nostalgia”

2015 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize
Judge: Lynn Emanuel
Winner: Lindsay Means, “Antikythera”
Honorable Mention: K.T. Landon, “The Dead Go Bowling”

Included with the purchase of this issue is a separate book: The Deathmask of El Gaucho by Dan Mancilla, winner of the  Little Presque Books Novella Contest. Little Presque was founded and is run by former Passages North managing editor, Timston Johnston.

And an added bonus: two brand new flash nonfiction pieces by Ander Monson from his Letters to a Future Lover series are tucked in the journal, because, as Monsoon said, they were “written and designed to be read unbound and looseleaf, and tucked into books, as the reader desires.”

[Cover art by Evan Prout.]

$1000 Lawrence Foundation Prize 2015
Alyson Hagy [photo: Ted Brummond] has won the thirty-eighth Lawrence Foundation Prize, joining, among other authors, Charles Baxter, Paul Bowles, Susan Dodd, Clark Blaise, Sena Jeter Naslund, Rebecca Makkai, Alice Mattison, and Lynne Sharon Schwartz. The prize is awarded annually by the Editorial Board of MQR to the author of the best short story published that year in the journal. A mature, finely crafted story set in Yellowstone country, Hagy’s “Switchback” appeared in the Spring 2015 issue.

$500 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize
Raymond McDaniel has won the 2015 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually to the author of the best poem or group of poems appearing that year in the MQR. His poem “Claire Lenoir,” appeared in the Fall 2015 issue. This year’s judge, Paisley Rekdal, writes: “The poem marvelously captures, in tone and form, the very essence of the uncanny: one of the poem’s central subjects. The poem renders the process through which we gain knowledge of ourselves and others both mysterious and terrifying at once, recalling for me Howard Baker’s plaintive question during the Watergate trials: What did you know, and when did you know it?”

$500 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets
Katie Hartsock has won the 2015 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets, which is awarded annually by the editors to the best poet appearing in MQR who has not yet published a book. Poetry Editor Keith Taylor writes about her poem “The Sister Karamazov,” which appeared in our Spring 2015 issue, “We were very impressed by this poet’s ability to enter one of the classics and to reimagine it, adding another emotional and metaphoric level to something that a lesser imagination might see as fixed and impenetrable.”

With the first-place prize recently raised to $3000 (how fortunate for David!), Glimmer Train has selected the 2015 December Fiction Open winners. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers. Stories generally range from 3000-6000 words, though up to 24,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: David Mizner [pictured], of New York, NY, wins $3000 for “Your Swim.” His story will be published in Issue 99 or 100 of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Ezekiel N. Finkelstein, of New York, NY, wins $1000 for “Clayton and the Apocalypse – scenes from an earlier life” and publication in a future issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Third place: Karen Malley, of Holyoke, MA, wins $600 for “Fragile.” Her story will also be published in a future issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing her prize to $700.

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

Deadline soon approaching for the 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 1500-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. First place prize wins $2500 (just increased from $1500!) and publication in Glimmer Train Stories. Second/third: $500/$300 and consideration for publication. Click here for complete guidelines.

The winners of the 2015 Neil Shepard Prizes appear in the newest issue of Green Mountains Review (v28n2):

Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction
Judged by Molly Antopol
“The Forest” by Sharon White

Neil Shepard Prize in Nonfiction
Judged by Amy Fusselman
“They’re Not Pretending Anymore” by Harry Leeds

Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry
Judged by Mike Young
“I Took to Walking Down the Middle of Highways to Avoid Getting Shot” and
“Pageantry Reigned Supreme at the 128th Veiled Prophet Ball” by Annie Christain

Read a the full list of finalists and winners here.

Winner and honorable mentions of the 20th National Poet Hunt Contest are featured in the newest issue (Fall 2015) of The MacGuffin.

First place
“Farewell the Beagle!” by Susan Richardson

Honorable Mention
“Time Awaits Her Arrival” by​ Susan Cowger
“The Secret Historian” by Elisabeth Murawski

Judge Laura Kasischke writes, “This was no easy task. The poetry submitted to the 20th National Poem Hunt Contest was remarkable. The range of styles and subject matters was vast, of course, but the mystery and loveliness of these many pieces remained consistent. Reading such a wealth of powerful poetry, I felt renewed in my hope for the craft. Any art form that calls so many sharp-eyed, witty, passionate minds to it can never die. In the end, I chose the poems that wouldn’t leave me alone, the ones I found myself thinking about for days after reading them.”