Submissions are currently open for the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize. A prize of $1,000 will be given for a single poem written by a poet residing in the western United States that “best exhibit[s] the qualities of originality, novelty, complex meaning, linguistic skill, and wit.” Jack Mueller will judge. The winner will be honored in a ceremony during the Telluride Literary Arts Festival in Telluride, Colorado, on May 16.

Submit a poem of any length with the required entry form and a $6 entry fee by April 15. E-mail submissions are preferred, but writers may submit via postal mail to Telluride Institute PO Box 1770, Telluride, CO 81435. Multiple submissions are accepted. Poems of any length, form, and content will be considered. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Now in its eighteenth year, the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize is cosponsored by San Miguel County Commissioner Elaine Fischer and San Miguel County Poet Laureate Peter Waldor. The prize pays tribute to the late Mark Fischer, a “much-loved poet, lawyer, skier, and raconteur.” The prize is hosted through a partnership with the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry program, the Wilkinson Library, the Telluride Arts District, Ah Haa School for the Arts, and Arroyo’s Telluride. Art Goodtimes, director of Talking Gourds, said in a press release: “We’re pleased to be able to honor Mark’s memory with a contest that benefits Western poets.” For more information about the prize, e-mail Art Goodtimes.

Photo: Mark and Elaine Fischer

Sometimes you need to finish writing your piece before you can give it a proper title. This week, pick the title first and write your personal essay around it. If something doesn't immediately come to mind, try and model your title after one of your favorite stories, books, albums, or movies. Then, free write for twenty minutes on anything and everything that your title brings to mind. At the end, organize your notes and use them as a framework for your personal essay.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced yesterday that Atticus Lish has won the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel, Preparation for the Next Life (Tyrant Books, 2014). The $15,000 annual award is given for a book of fiction by an American author published in the previous year.

Judges Alexander Chee, Marc Fitten, and Dierdre McNamer chose Lish’s novel from 360 entries. “With ferocious precision, Atticus Lish scours and illuminates the vast, traumatized America that lives, works, and loves outside the castle gates," said McNamer. “The result is an incantation, a song of ourselves, a shout.”

Preparation for the Next Life, which tells the love story of a Chinese Muslim immigrant and an Iraq War veteran living in New York City, is Lish’s debut novel. The son of the renowned editor Gordon Lish, who famously edited the work of Raymond Carver, Atticus Lish spent five years quietly writing his novel before selling it to small press Tyrant Books for a modest advance of two thousand dollars.

The 2015 finalists for the prize are Jeffery Renard Allen for his novel Song of the Shank (Graywolf Press); Jennifer Clement for her novel Prayers for the Stolen (Hogarth); Emily St. John Mandel for her novel Station Eleven (Knopf); and Jenny Offill for her novel Dept. of Speculation (Knopf). Each finalist will receive $5,000.

Lish and the four finalists will be honored at the 35th annual PEN/Faulkner Awards ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. on May 2. The event is open to the public; tickets are available online.

C. S. Lewis used a wardrobe, J. M. Barrie used the second star to the right, and Lewis Carroll used a rabbit hole—each a gateway to another world. This week, pick an object that is important to you and transform it into a portal to an alternate world. Write a story about someone discovering the portal and adjusting to life where everything is foreign. Take into consideration where this secret passage is located and what it feels like to pass through it.