Genre: Fiction

Pushcart's Winningest Magazines

G&A: The Contest Blog
2.9.12

The Pushcart Prizes, given annually since 1976 for poems, stories, and essays published by literary magazines and indie outfits, purport to highlight the "best of the small presses" in a yearly anthology.

Looking to apply some objective analysis to the results (and determine, by Pushcart standards, where his own fiction might be in the most distinguished company), one writer has taken to tracking winning venues over the years.

Since 2008 Clifford Garstang, author of the story collection In an Uncharted Country (Press 53, 2009) and editor of Prime Number Magazine, has looked back at the past ten years of Pushcart anthologies and calculated the most-honored magazines, using a system that awards points for Pushcart wins and honorable mentions. The results for 2012, broken out by genre, were reported last week his Perpetual Folly blog.

This year's tally saw Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and Southern Review taking top slots across all three genres, with Conjunctions ranking in the top five in both fiction and nonfiction. Poetry was the front-runner in its genre of specialization. Big movers in fiction, in relation to Garstang's 2011 rankings, were A Public Space and One Story. In nonfiction, Harvard Review and n+1 made jumps this year, tied for thirty-second place. (Small presses make a lesser showing, though BOA Editions holds the fifteenth spot in poetry.)

Garstang admits that ten-year retrospective he takes naturally favors older journals, as well as magazines that appear in print (only one online journal was highlighted in the 2012 award anthology). "Pushcart has for several years been criticized for discriminating against online magazines," Garstang writes on his blog. "Online magazines have made some inroads in the annual volume. I expect this will accelerate and the problem will correct itself. We shall see. In the meantime, for those of us who submit work to online journals—some of which are excellent—we have to look elsewhere for measures of quality."

For more information about the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology, visit the prize website.

University Lit Mag Launches Fiction Contest

G&A: The Contest Blog
2.7.12

Barely South Review, the literary journal of the MFA program at Virginia's Old Dominion University, has announced its first writing contest.

The Norton Girault Literary Prize for fiction, which will alternate annually with awards in poetry and creative nonfiction, offers one thousand dollars and publication in Barely South.

The 2012 judge is Cristina García, whose debut novel, Dreaming in Cuban (Knopf), was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. Her other novels include The Agüero Sisters (Knopf, 1997), Monkey Hunting (Knopf, 2003), A Handbook to Luck (Knopf, 2007), and The Lady Matador's Hotel (Scribner, 2010).

Fiction writers may submit a story of up to 25 pages via snail mail or Submittable, the online submission system, until February 29. Results will be announced in April.

Scrapbook a Story

The Time Is Now
2.7.12

Find a blank notebook, and for one week fill it with whatever strikes you—images, photographs, cut-out excerpts from articles or books, notes on matchbooks, maps, drawings, and your own writing. At the end of the week, use this material as inspiration for a story.

Hugo House

Literary Archive, Reading Venue, Writing Center

Founded in 1997, the Hugo House offers writing classes and events, including the annual Hugo Literary Series, which invites established and up-and-coming writers to create new work and debut it at the house, and the Zine Archive and Publishing Project, which maintains a library of more than 20,000 handmade and independent publications. Residencies, one for an established writer and one for a youth writer, are also offered.

Tags: 
literary organizations | literary sites | reading venues | residencies | workshops | research

The Next-Generation Independent Bookstore

Caption: 

Kepler's Books has been operating in Menlo Park, California, since 1955. After the recent retirement of Clark Kepler, a group of people committed to the bookstore's place in the community came together to start the process of imagining what the future of Kepler's will look like. The vision, as discussed in this video, combines a nonprofit model that can offer literary events with a community-owned bookstore that will preserve the physical space.

Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
short film
Kepler's Books

Ploughshares Launches Tri-Genre Emerging Writer's Contest

G&A: The Contest Blog
2.2.12

Starting yesterday, forty-year-old literary journal Ploughshares began accepting entries for a new writing contest open to unpublished poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers.

The Emerging Writer's Contest, an expansion of last year's inaugural competition in fiction, will award one thousand dollars and publication to a writer in each genre.

In order to be considered "emerging," writers should not have published a book or chapbook in any form (self-published works included). Ploughshares invites potential entrants with eligibility questions to inquire via e-mail.

Poets may submit between three and five poems and prose writers may submit works of up to five thousand words along with a twenty-dollar entry fee, which includes a subscription to Ploughshares, until April 2. For complete guidelines and to access the submission manager, visit the journal's website.

The winner of the first contest was thirty-six-year-old Thomas Lee, for his story "The Gospel of Blackbird," which appears in the current issue of the magazine, alongside fiction by James Franco, William Giraldi, Ann Hood, and Rachel Kadish. Sample works from the issue, guest edited by Alice Hoffman, are accessible online.

Today's Headlines

The Time Is Now
2.1.12

Read the headlines in today's newspaper. Choose one that you find compelling, and without reading the accompanying article, write a story based on the headline. 

Henry Darger

Caption: 

In the Realms of the Unreal, a documentary film directed by Jessica Yu, explores the mystery of Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor in Chicago who wrote perhaps the world's longest novel and became one of the most famous figures in outsider art. A 15,145-page, single-spaced manuscript titled "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion," along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story, was discovered shortly before Darger's death in 1973.

Genre: 
Fiction
Tags: 
documentary
In the Realms of the Unreal
Henry Darger
Jessica Yu

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