Genre: Poetry

While No One Wins in Fiction, Smith and Greenblatt Get Pulitzer Props

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.16.12

The Twittersphere heated up this afternoon after news broke that no Pulitzer Prize would be awarded for fiction published in 2011. The finalists for the award, also revealed today, were Denis Johnson for Train Dreams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Karen Russell for Swamplandia! (Knopf), and the late David Foster Wallace for The Pale King (Little, Brown). No explanation has been given regarding the decision to withhold the prize, a move that last occurred in 1977, except that the choice was up to the Pulitzer board, and not this year's judges, Maureen Corrigan, Michael Cunningham, and Susan Larson.

On Twitter, Publishers Marketplace news editor Sara Weinman (@sarahw) inquired, where does the money go, if no prize is given? (Each winner receives ten thousand dollars.) Beatrice.com creator Ron Hogan (@RonHogan) bemoaned the perceived necessity of such a prize altogether, writing, "But, but, if we don't have a Pulitzer-winning novel, nobody will get the sales boost, and publishing will be DOOOOOMED! #waaah." Public relations maven Kimberly Burns (@kimberlyburnspr) offered a similar sentiment: "No #Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstore & ask a bookseller for a recommendation."

But amid the chatter over the Pulitzer in fiction, plenty of attention was sent the way of poetry prize recipient Tracy K. Smith, whose win for Life on Mars (Graywolf Press) came on, of all days, her birthday. The finalists in poetry, also published by small presses, were Forrest Gander for Core Samples From the World (New Directions) and Ron Padgett for How Long (Coffee House Press).

Stephen Greenblatt took the prize in general nonfiction for his National Book Award-winning The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Norton). The finalists were Diane Ackerman for One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing (Norton) and Mara Hvistendahl for Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Public Affairs).

The Pulitzer Prizes are given annually for books published in the previous year by American authors.

In the video below, Smith discusses Life on Mars, including what Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey have to do with her winning collection.

The Mansion of Happiness

Caption: 

This animated film by Vanessa Woods, with sound by Cheryl E. Leonard and Anka Draugelates, was inspired by The Mansion of Happiness, a poetry collection by Robin Ekiss published by the University of Georgia Press in 2009. Featuring original photograms and hundreds of nineteenth-century collage elements, it explores "the philosophical boundaries between myth and memory and between our inner and outer worlds."

Genre: 
Poetry
Tags: 
animation
2009
University of Georgia Press
The Mansion of Happiness
Robin Ekiss

Iowa Review Introduces Contest for Veterans

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.9.12

In partnership with the family of a Vietnam veteran known for his antiwar writing and activism, Iowa Review has launched a multigenre writing contest open to U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel. The Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award competition, which offers one thousand dollars and publication in Iowa Review, is accepting entries of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on any subject.

Pulitzer Prize winner and Vietnam veteran Robert Olen Butler will select the winning work from a pool chosen by the journal's editors (all finalists will be considered for publication). Butler, much of whose work is informed by his experiences in the U.S. military, served in Vietnam as an intelligence agent and a translator. He is the author of twelve novels, most recently A Small Hotel (Grove Press, 2011), six short story collections, and a nonfiction book on craft, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (Grove Press, 2005).

Writers may submit their work with a fifteen-dollar entry fee via Submittable or postal mail (an extra ten dollars gets entrants a yearlong subscription to the magazine). The deadline is June 15. Visit the Iowa Review website for complete guidelines.

In the video below, Butler discusses how his time in the military led the former playwright to fiction, and how his experiences in Vietnam have shaped his work.

National Poetry Series Launches Spanish-Language Book Prize

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.5.12

In collaboration with Miami Dade College, the thirty-four-year-old National Poetry Series has established a new book award to accompany its five annual prizes, for a collection of Spanish-language verse.

The winner of the inaugural Paz Prize for Poetry will receive five hundred dollars, and Akashic Books will publish the winning book in a bilingual edition.

The competition, open to American poets writing in Spanish, will begin accepting manuscript entries on May 1 and will close on June 15. Finalists will be announced in July, and a winner, selected by Puerto Rican American poet Victor Hernández Cruz, will be named in September.

"In our increasingly diverse nation, poetry in translation is not just desired, but necessary," says Alina Interian, executive director of Miami Dade College's literary hub, the Center, in a press release. "It allows for shared experience across cultures and greater understanding, and for even more beauty in our world."

Complete guidelines for the Paz Prize are available on the National Poetry Series website.

Ross Gay, Michael Waters Judge Two New Book Contests

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.4.12

Trio House Press, a new poetry outfit in Staten Island, New York, is accepting entries for two book awards. The prize for a first or second poetry collection, judged by Ross Gay, will award publication and one thousand dollars. A second one-thousand-dollar award, judged by Michael Waters, will grant publication of a manuscript by a poet in any stage of her career.

In addition to publication and the monetary prize, the press will also offer winners a role behind the scenes at Trio House. The press has adopted a cooperative structure, so winners will become part of publishing operations for a twenty-four month period (similar to the model employed by, for example, Alice James Books and Calypso Editions) and be involved, each joining one of four committees, in the publication of subsequent books. (Trio House plans to release three titles a year.)

This year's judge in emerging poetry, Gay is the author of two collections, Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006). He is a Cave Canem fellow and a professor at Indiana University and Drew University's low-residency MFA program.

General prize judge Waters, also a teacher in Drew University's program (as well as a professor at Monmouth University in his home state of New Jersey), is author of ten collections, most recently Gospel Night (BOA Editions, 2011). He is also coeditor of the most recent edition of Contemporary American Poetry, published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin.

For both of Trio House's competitions, poets residing in the United States may submit manuscripts of forty-eight to seventy pages with an entry fee of twenty-five dollars by April 30. Entries are accepted via Submittable (formerly Submishmash).

In the video below, Gay recites a poem at the Page Meets Stage reading series in New York City.

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