The annual literary journal Stone Canoe, published by the University College of Syracuse University, is offering three prizes—in poetry, fiction, and, for the first time, in creative nonfiction—to writers who have a strong connection to upstate New York.

Award winners will have their work published in the 2011 issue of Stone Canoe and receive a five-hundred-dollar prize.

Poets may submit, via the online submission system, up to five poems, and prose writers may submit a single piece of up to ten thousand words. The journal also asks for a short biography of up to one hundred words that includes details about the writer's connection to upstate New York. The deadline is July 31, and there is no entry fee. Guidelines are available on the journal's Web site.

This year's winner in poetry is Juliana Gray of Alfred, New York, for her poems "Nancy Drew,
45, Posts on Match.com," "The Birds," and "Three Scenes." In fiction, Sarah Layden, who currently lives in Indianapolis, received the award for her short story "Hysterectomy." Their winning works were published in the 2010 issue of Stone Canoe.

The fifth annual Dolman Best Travel Book Award, given for a literary work "in the tradition of great travel writing, combining a personal journey with the discovery or recovery of places, landscapes,
or peoples," was awarded yesterday to Ian Thomson.

The Scottish author received the twenty-five-hundred-pound prize (approximately $3,800) for The Dead Yard: Tales From Modern Jamaica (Faber and Faber, 2009), a narrative that observes a postcolonial Jamaica "that's neither the rum and reggae of Disneyfied Montego Bay nor the 'guns, guns, guns' of Kingston's slums" often depicted in stories about the country, according to a review in the Guardian.

Earlier this year, Thomson's book received the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize, which honors a work that evokes the spirit of a place. "His candid portrait—vigorous, illuminating and sometimes shocking—allows Jamaica to speak for itself," the Ondaatje Prize judges said. "This is the best kind of travel writing: stimulating, educative, and evocative."

Other books that were shortlisted for the Dolman Award, given only for a work released by a U.K. publisher, are:
Along the Enchanted Way by William Blacker (John Murray)
A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare (Chatto & Windus)
Eleven Minutes Late by Mathew Engel (Macmillan)
Lost and Found in Russia by Susan Richards (I. B. Tauris)
Out of Steppe by Daniel Metcalfe (Hutchinson)
Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico by Hugh Thomson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

The 2010 judges were Jonny Bealby, Ben Fogle, Candida Lycett Green, Michael Jacobs, Dan Linstead, and Brett Wolstencroft.

Jacob Paul, author of the novel Sarah/Sara, published by Ig Publishing in May, is one of the five debut authors featured in our July/August issue’s First Fiction 2010.

The piece in the magazine focuses on the intriguing plotlines of Paul’s novel—and rightly so: Sarah/Sara is about a young Orthodox Jewish woman who takes a solo kayak trip across the Artic Ocean after her parents are killed and she is disfigured by a suicide bomber in a Jerusalem café

The novel’s narrative is gripping, but Paul also told us a pretty interesting story—about his early experiences with a literary agent—that didn’t make it into print.

“I didn’t initially intend to publish with an indie press. I found an agent for Sarah/Sara the week after I finished it. He then spent three years sending it to nine places that all wrote nice letters asking to see the next book. Meanwhile, he decided he didn't want to be an agent any longer. By the time I began looking for a new agent, two years ago, most were gun-shy about representing debut fiction. So, I had a few long, friendly conversations with agents who wanted me to try them again in 2010.

“Then, really by chance, I met Robert Lasner [of Ig Publishing] at the 2009 AWP conference.… He and Elizabeth Clementson liked the book, and I liked them. As it turns out, I could not have asked for a better publishing experience. They've sent out lots and lots of galleys, set me up with readings in five cities, arranged for me to work with the Jewish Book Council, and just generally been great to work with.”

So take it from Jacob Paul: If you can’t find a literary agent, or if your literary agent can’t place your work, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. There are alternatives.

If you have a suggestion, anecdote, or essay for Agent Action, send an e-mail to [email protected] or post a comment below.

Flatmancrooked, the Sacramento-based publisher of Poets & Writers Magazine's recent cover subject James Kaelan's debut novel, is currently holding its second story contest.

The winner of the Flatmancrooked Fiction Prize—taken last year by Kevin Walsh for "Un-Love Letters"—will receive one thousand dollars and publication of the winning work in the anthology Flatmancrooked 4, which will appear in print and e-book editions.

Benjamin Percy, author of the novel The Wilding (forthcoming from Graywolf Press in the fall) and the story collections Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk, will serve as judge, selecting the winner and a runner up from ten finalists determined by the editorial staff.

Story entries must be submitted via an online form by July 31, along with a fifteen-dollar fee for one story, or forty dollars for three. More details about the submission process are available on the Flatmancrooked Web site, which, incidentally, features new fiction on its blog every week.