Genre: Fiction

Georgetown Review, the literary magazine of the Georgetown, Kentucky–based Georgetown College, is currently accepting submissions to its annual magazine contest. A prize of $1,000 and publication is given for a poem, a short story, or an essay. The deadline is October 15. 

Submit a poem, a short story, or an essay of any length with a $10 entry fee ($5 for each additional entry) online via Submittable, or by mail to Georgetown Review, 400 East College Street, Box 227, Georgetown, KY 40324.

The magazine’s editors will judge. Winners will be announced on the Georgetown Review website in February 2014. To have work returned, or to receive the winner announcement by mail, include a self-addressed stamped envelope with paper submissions. Colleagues, friends, and students of the editors are ineligible. All entries are considered for publication.

Georgetown Review also sponsors an annual short story collection contest for a book of stories or novellas; and a poetry manuscript contest, which will be judged this year by Ada Limón. General submissions are read between September 1 and December 31.

Visit the website to read excerpts of work published in the current issue, including Lisa Lenzo’s Strays, which won the 2013 contest.

As children our imaginations ruled the land. However, years of life, love, and loss erode our creative shores and the rustling trees and vibrant animals that inhabited them. The unstoppable dinosaurs and steaming teacups in our small hands suddenly become pieces of plastic from a toy store. Write a short story through the eyes of a four-year-old child. Go on an adventure.  

After a week of longlist announcements in the categories of poetry, nonfiction, and young people’s literature, the National Book Foundation wrapped up its announcements late last week with the much-anticipated longlist for the foundation’s fiction prize.

The finalists are Tom Drury, Pacific (Grove Press), Elizabeth Graver, The End of the Point (Harper), Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner), Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Knopf), Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth), James McBride, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books), Alice McDermott, Someone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press), George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House), and Joan Silber, Fools (Norton).

As the foundation notes, the list includes “four [previous] National Book Award winners and finalists, a Pulitzer Prize winner and finalist, recipients of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship, and a debut novelist.” Among a list of favorites like Pynchon and Saunders, Anthony Marra’s debut, published this past May, has received much praise, and Lahiri has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Charles Baxter, Gish Jen, Charles McGrath, Rick Simonson, René Steinke judged.

Frank Bidart’s Metaphysical Dog (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Lucie Brock-Broido’s Stay, Illusion (Knopf), and Brenda Hillman’s Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (Wesleyan University Press) topped a poetry longlist marked by debut poets. The lists in each category, including nonfiction and young people’s literature, were announced on the Daily Beast.

The foundation also recently named its annual 5 Under 35, and announced that E. L. Doctorow will receive the 2013 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and Maya Angelou will receive the 2013 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

The National Book Award shortlists in each category will be announced October 16, and the winners will be named at the foundation's annual awards ceremony in New York City on November 20.