Incendiary Lit

That’s right, Glimmer Train’s monthly contest for August is the Very Short Fiction Award, which limits the piece at 3,000 words. Maybe I’ve read too much flash fiction in the last few years, but I usually feel long winded at 3,000 words. Damn you Amy Hempel! And your wickedly expansive terseness. Anyway, Yes, there is a mere 2 days until the deadline for this contest. This is MASSIVE! It’s like the PULITZER topped with dark chocolate whipped cream (which should exist, don’t you think?)! Or, at least it is one prize of twelve this year (there is, however, one other month in which a very short fiction contest is conducted). Whichever way you choose to see it, Glimmer Train’s an amazing journal for fiction. If you haven’t seen it definitely check it out. Interesting work. Click here for more information about the contest. Or here to see upcoming month’s submission themes or restrictions, or here, because, why not link to Glimmer Train one more time?

Pertinent info: Entry Fee: $15 per story. Prize: $1,200 and 20 copies of the journal (2nd $500, 3rd $300).  Max. Word Count: 3,000. Deadline: Online submissions close midnight (pacific) September 1. So, this Sunday night by 11:59 PM on the west coast.

Even though I didn’t win { } I look forward to reading the manuscript Yusef Komunyakaa chose as the student winner for the mtvU Poetry Prize, which is linked to the National Poetry Series.

All of the NPS winners this year are:

Kristin Naca of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bird Eating Bird
Chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa , to be published by HarperCollins Publishers

Sarah O’Brien of Brookfield, Ohio, catch light
Chosen by David Shapiro, to be published by Coffee House Press

To all: CONGRATS!!!

His manuscript “Kurosawa’s Dog” beat out hundreds of others to win. Congratulations. For information on how to enter the 2009 Field Poetry Prize wait for a few months then click here.

Dennis Hinrichsen’s other books include Details from the Garden of Earthly Delights, Rain That Falls this Far and The Attractions of Heavenly Bodies. Of his most recent, Details… Yusef Komunyakaa said Hinrichsen’s work  “achieves a classical tone within an experimental shape, as the poems meander through a pulsating labyrinth of nuanced imagery.”

Field’s an example of a journal that I originally submitted to,*looks around to make sure no one overhears* without reading first. And I of course got rejected. But, undaunted, I made a wise move and entered the 2006 (or 2005, I forget which) book contest, and though the entry was completely wrong for them, I got a subscription and read the journal and saw the error of my ways. It’s a bit more edgy, experimental. Cerebral I guess is a good way to put it, but it’s not indecipherable either. So now I know that I should send the mostly poems with that cerebral slant to them, which I think most serious writers will write at least occasionally. Just something to keep in mind: read journals whenever you can before you submit your work to them.

Or maybe even less, depending on your time zone. Here’s the pertinent information, and here’s a shorthand of that:

Postmark deadline: Today, July 15th 2008

Page count: 48-64

Judge: Gerald Locklin

Fee/Prize: $20 (includes a copy of the winning book)/$1000 (and 25 copies of your book)

July 31st:

Kore Press First Award (for a woman’s first book of poetry) Prize: $1000, 48-70 page restriction, submit and pay online here. (if you send $45 you get your manuscript entered and copies of the three most recent winners, but just entrance is cheaper)

August 1st

Bellevue Literary Review(prizes for fiction, poetry and nonfiction) Naomi Shihab Nye will judge in poetry, Rosellen Brown in fiction, and Natalie Angier in creative nonfiction.Prize: $1000. Submit up to 3 poems (no more than 5 pages) or a piece of prose under 5000 words. Entry fee: $15 (an extra $5 will get you a year’s subscription to BLR also). Full submission guidelines here.

Rattle Poetry Prize (single poem). Prize: $5000 (and $100 to ten runner-up poems). Entrance fee: $16 (which gets you a year’s subscription to the tome that is Rattle, and you send up to four poems. Guidelines for online and postal submissions here.

August 15th

Chamber Press Chapbook Contest. Prize: $1000. Entry fee: $15. Length Restrictions: Up to 24 pages. Judged by Steve Orlen (who teaches in UA- Tuscon, and Warren Wilson’s MFA programs) . Full submission guidelines here.

August 29th

Katherine Anne Porter Prize (University of North Texas Press’s contest for book-length collection of short fiction) Prize: $1000. Entry fee: $25. Length restrictions: 100-200 pages. Click here for full submission guidelines.

That’s right, Indiana Review’s 1/2K Prize deadline is Monday June 9th, 2008. The postmark deadline means that the post office must acknowledge that it has received the letter/package from you on that date. Which means it has to be in the box before that day’s pick up, or you’ve just saved yourself $15 by not entering the contest. Though if IR makes minor exceptions, I’m not sure… some journals do and some don’t. Oh, you can also submit online, so if you’re savvy enough to be reading this, you can probably figure out their submission center thing. It’s pretty straightforward. Regardless, here’s the information one more time:

What is it? A contest for prose poems or flash fictions 500 words or less.

When is it? See an inch or so above this line for that answer.

How much is it? $15, which includes a year’s subscription to Indiana Review, which I highly, highly recommend. It’s definitely one of my favorite literary journals.

Who’s judging? Funny you should ask that, it’s Russell Edson. See the last post about the 1/2k prize here to read more about Edson.

Where can I submit online? Right here. The info’s about halfway down the page.

Is it judged anonymously? Yes, which means don’t put your little header with your name and address and phone/fax/email and city of birth and blood type on it. Just the piece of writing (if you really want to you can include the title too, I guess. haha) for consideration.

Why should I submit? Because you have some amazing prose poems/short-shorts that you feel convey not only emotion, but the extra special something that makes the reader immediately reread it. Also, because The Indiana Review comes out twice a year, and it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find 2-3 pieces, at bare minimum, that you’ll enjoy. Which is at least 5 or 6 for $15 with both issues, which isn’t such a bad average compared to some other journals which shall remain nameless (just like your submissions, aside from a cover letter which lists the pieces submitted).

After reading a great deal of literary magazines I’ve come to hope that if I enter enough of the Indiana Review contests that I’ll eventually accrue a lifetime subscription. Every issue there are amazing poems, fiction, and even art. Also, ever since Sydney Brown’s creative nonfiction workshop I’ve had a soft-spot for the flash-fiction. The short short. Not sure who to blame for my prose poem affinity. Maybe Campbell McGrath. Yeah, I could probably safely blame my love for prose poems on his first book Capitalism.
The bastard.
Anyway, the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize is another one of those self-explanatory contest title names like “First Book of Poetry” or “Who can fart the bonfire started with a lighter?” though I’ve been told first prize for that last one isn’t quite as much as the hospital bills the second place winner receives, so it’s a gamble. The prize is for prose poems or short-shorts that are 500 words or less. 1/2 of 1K, 1,000. Yeah. 1000×0.5, even.
Entry Fee: $15 ($27 overseas)- which includes a year’s subscription to IR. Definitely well worth it. Consider it a bonus gift for subscribing, you’re entered into a sweepstakes where you could win $1000 and critical acclaim! HOORRAYYYY! But really, you never know who’s going to like your style, your flair for story structure, your unique image sets, so why not spend the $15 and ensure yourself two 200 page collections of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and reviews that I personally guarantee you’ll enjoy at least 1/3 of. If you don’t I’ll personally apologize in a form-email that I’ve already composed.
Deadline: June 9th! That’s right, very soon. That’s the postmark deadline. You can also submit online for the Indiana Review 1/2k Prize here.
Final Judge: You know the deal, the regular readers for the Indiana Review sort through the hundreds or thousands of pieces submitted, and narrow them down substantially. Then they move onto the senior editors who narrow it down to a reasonable number for the guest judge. Or it goes from readers to judge, depends on the contest, but if you make it past the early screening your prose poem/short short will be judged by none other than Russell Edson. I think Webdelsol summed up his biography best so I’ll shamelessly copy-paste that here for convenience: Russell Edson was born in Connecticut in 1935 and currently resides there with his wife Frances. Edson, who jokingly has called himself “Little Mr. Prose Poem,” is inarguably the foremost writer of prose poetry in America, having written exclusively in that form before it became fashionable. In a forthcoming study of the American prose poem, Michel Delville suggests that one of Edson’s typical “recipes” for his prose poems involves a modern everyman who suddenly tumbles into an alternative reality in which he loses control over himself, sometimes to the point of being irremediably absorbed–both figuratively and literally–by his immediate and, most often, domestic everyday environment. . . . Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre, Edson delights in having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo the most unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. . . .
I mean, it’s not a biography, but the pertinent information for someone who’s judging a writing contest. I first read Edson in Stand Up Poetry, Charles Harper Webb’s kick ass anthology. So send in to the 1/2k prize. What were you going to do with that $15 anyway? Buy two drinks at dinner? A frappuccino for yourself and two friends? 1/2 of a shirt? Get some good literature and an extra reason to be excited to see the mailman.

That’s right, get your three poems together, your $15 check, and mail that paper to Boulevard. Here’s the link to the information, and here’s the info:

Open to anyone who hasn’t published a book of poetry (standard, chapbooks ok, as long as nothing’s been ‘with a national distributor’)

Price: $15 (includes a one year subscription)
# of poems: 3
Deadline: Today (5/15/08)

The Writers @ Work (where hip meets lit according to their website) is a conference held in Utah June 23rd-27th. Yes, just days after my birthday and I didn’t win free tuition from a pool of hundreds. So sad. Anyway, here are the winners. Go here to check out more information about the conference. It looks really cool.

(from their website www.writersatwork.org)

Winner: Margot Wizansky, Brookline, MA, for “Cosmography”

About “Cosmography,” Ms. Addonizio had the following comments:

“The author of ‘Cosmography’ has a gift for narrative and for language which creates an experience of lived life for the reader. I admired this writer’s ability to convincingly render the voice of an eighteenth-century midwife in the ambitious opening poem. Like the description of a steak in ‘Breakfast at the Retirement Home,’ the writing here is often ‘luscious, blood-rare.’ ”

1st Honorable Mention: Keegan Goodman, Chicago, IL, for “Four Poems (’Residence’ and others)”

About “Four Poems: (”Residence” and others):

“From an autobiography written by a dead man to a woman attempting to construct human beings out of grease fat and coffee grounds, these prose poems create their own marvelous and off-kilter worlds.”

—

I don’t know about you guys, but that first honorable mention sounds awfully interesting. Russell Edson-esque is what I’m hoping for, but we’ll see. These winners will be published in an upcoming Quarterly West, and will receive free tuition to the Writers at Work conference. The poetry winners were chosen by Kim Addonizio, fiction by Steve Almond, nonfiction by Abigail Thomas. The other winners were (fiction)

Winner: Ben Roberts, Ogden, UT, for “The Three Nephites”

About “The Three Nephites,” Mr. Almond had this to say:

“My God. I was absolutely blown away by this story, which does what every great short story must: it creates its own world and sucks the reader into that world and horrifies us and at the same time (and this is the miracle, I think) makes us never want to leave. The voice is absolutely fearless, ecstatic, and dangerously wise. I could feel my heart thumping as I read the last line, and for a long time after.”

(not exactly a scathing review) and nonfiction:

Winner: Valerie Due, San Diego, CA (Yay San Diego), for “The Skinning Board”

About “The Skinning Board,” Ms. Thomas has the following comments:

“I love the emotional restraint coupled with the ravishing prose of the piece. It serves so perfectly the young narrator whose initiation into the harsh realities of life–and death–on a farm is being presented here.”

Crab Orchard Review’s Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction prizes.

University of Pittsburgh Press Agnes Lynch Starrett First book prize. 

Yep, the Contemporary Verse 2 2-day poem contest is here, and it’s half over. The ten words are Vessel, filament, proof, article, thorax, wrench, buckle, sienna, rattle, and nervous. The real wrench in the gears is thorax. Filament is a cool word, and easy to use because it sounds so cool. They have a clock on the guidelines site here.
So far, I’ve written 3 different versions. A sestina, a double abecedarian, and a white space happy free verse poem. All with different narratives (the 2xABCDian is loosely a narrative).

I planned on writing a more standard for me “kind of quirky and ironic free verse” poem, and maybe try something even more crazy, like a paradelle. That would be pretty sweet, but I make no promises.

After the contest is closed, I hope to post some participant’s alternate poems as well as my own in a little permanent link page by the Firestarter Challenges. You know the address: zebulonhuset (a - t) gmail (dot) com.

It’s Tupelo Press and Crazyhorse magazine together to offer this first book award, which means, as it says, no full length books published. I believe chapbooks are ok.

Important information:
Deadline: April 15th
Length: 48-80 pages
Cost: $25
Prize: $3000
Bonus: Every entrant receives a copy of the winning book. No, let’s call it “wins” Every entrant WINS a copy of the winning book.

Here’s a link to the rest of the info, you can pay for the contest through paypal, which is nice for someone who’s running out of checks, like me. And you have to fill out a permission form and submit it as well, the link to that is here as a pdf, or also on the page.

Yes. To be redundant, CV2, Contemporary Verse 2 is running a 2-day poetry contest. You get a list of ten words, and have 2 days from the receipt of the words to write a 48 line or less poem. Here’s where you enter. Pay through paypal. Enter today though! How fun is that? I’ll post alternate versions of contest poems that people submit, because I don’t know about you, but I’m not just writing one poem and sticking with it, I’ll probably toss around upwards of 3 or 4 different versions.

Here’s what it’s about. Basically, and simply, it’s an mtv sponsored new division of the National Poetry Series, which picks only from college (undergrad and grad) students. This, the inaugural year is judged by none other than Yusef Komunyakaa, who the winner will interview for MTVu in an episode of “My shot with” as well as having the book published by HarperCollins, and, yeah, I wouldn’t mind my first book being published by Harper-FREAKING-COLLINS. Not a bad place for a first book, if you ask me. So obviously, I’ve entered, and await my inevitable rejection, like so many others must be. I really just want to get this first book out of the way already, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it where I want it, the right poems in the right order, so I am trying to move onto the next collection, which is hard to do without a first published. Sooner or later. Hmph.

In other first book contest news, The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize looms on the horizon, however, end of April deadline, and that is another really sweet contest, very prestigious, and there’s a $5,000 grand prize, which sets it a little further apart.

What) The Crab Orchard Review’s Annual Literary Contests: The Richard Peterson Poetry Prize, The Jack Dyer Fiction Prize, & The John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize.

When) April 30th, 2008.

How much) $10 entry fee (includes an issue) with grand prizes of $1,500 in each of the three contests.

Why) Because Crab Orchard Review’s a rad journal, very nice, and always quality. At an entry fee of only ten bucks, which includes a copy of the issue the winners are published in. You can merely look at it as buying a copy of the journal if money’s tight, as it is for most young writers. A copy of Crab Orchard’s worth ten bucks. And you never know, your entry may just be worth $1,500.

OK, I’ve been wanting to set up something like this for a long time. Contemporary Verse 2, or CV2 is running a two day contest. You pre-register by March 28th. OnApril 5th all entrants are given a list of ten words, and have 48 hours to write a poem using those  ten words. How awesome is that? Tell your friends! It’s a great thing. No more than 48 lines, also, so for those of us who typically write shorter poems, ahem, we don’t have to worry about losing due to sheer volume (or lack thereof).

It’s a $10 fee, first prize is $350, Second $175, Third gets $90 (but not publication).

Check it out: The Southeast Review presents the World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. Up to 500 words. Deadline March 15, 2008. Judged by Robert Olen Butler. Submit up to 3 short-shorts. $15 entry. They also offer a poetry contest, same prize and entry fee, submit up to 3 poems. Judged by one of my all-time favorite poets, the king of the sprawling compound sentence, David Kirby.

More immediately, LSU’s journal New Delta is running the Matt Clark Prize with a deadline of February 28, either fiction or poetry. Prize is $100. Entry is $5.

Have at ‘em.

Oh, and wish me luck in the mtvU section of the NPS. My manuscript The Very Bottom of the Sky is under consideration for that now. How freaking cool would that be? The winner even gets to meet Yusef Komunyakaa.

Hey you short fiction writers, or poets who like to dabble into prose, the next two days Firestarter Exercises are part of a special contest. Only Today (Tuesday) and tomorrow’s prose exercises are included, the stories (2,000 words long) must be emailed to zebulonhuset (at) gmail (dot) com by Sunday at midnight. Cash Prize: $30

And no entry fee. Just write the story, email it, and the best story will collect the cash. Have at it.

Cleveland State University’s First Book (and Open) Contest deadline is Just two weeks away! They’ve published their share of wonderful writers, including David Kirby and Thomas Lux, so your work is in good hands. Entry is $25, postmark deadline 2/15/08, here’s the full submission information. Go get ‘em!

Here is all the information you need to submit to the Yale Series of Younger Poets (deadline is next thursday, 11/15/07), one of the biggest awards a young poet can dream of winning. Join the ranks of Louise Gluck, Adrienne Rich, John Hollander, John Ashberry, Jack Gilbert, James Tate and Robert Hass, and send in your first manuscript next week… or wait another year.