writing contests

Six months after announcing that there would be no winner chosen for their First Book Award in Fiction competition, Winnow Press struggles to fulfill their uncommon promise to refund entry fees.

Two years after the failure of Zoo Press's fiction contests in 2004, founder Neil Azevedo responds about more controversy surrounding its poetry contests.

The University of Georgia Press recently revoked the 2004 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction given to Brad Vice of Starkville, Mississippi, for his short story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, which was published in September 2005, after learning that one of the stories contained uncredited material from Carl Carmer’s Stars Fell on Alabama, a book of nonfiction published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1934 and later reprinted by the University of Alabama Press.

Joining the ranks of literary contests that have failed to yield a winner, Winnow Press is the latest sponsor to announce that the manuscripts received for their First Book Award were not up to par; they are, however, offering something of a consolation prize.