Winners and Honorable Mentions, Cleaver Magazine’s 2022 Flash Contest, Judged by Meg Pokrass

Ever since Cleaver Magazine published self’s story Toad, a few years ago, she has had a soft spot for this scrappy little independent publication, based in Philadelphia, a city always close to her heart because that was where Dearest Mum studied piano (at Curtis) and where Dear Departed Sister got her MBA (at Wharton).

Given how they were already operating on a shoestring budget, self offered fervent prayers that they would somehow make it through the pandemic, and they have!

Today, they announced the winners and finalists of their 2022 flash contest. Let’s give all the winners and honorable mentions a big hand!

First Place: Sabrina Hicks, “When We Knew How to Get Lost”

Second Place: Janet Burroway, “The Tale of Molly Grimm”

Third Place: Dawn Miller, “The Egg”

Honorable Mention: Laura Tanenbaum, Fannie H. Gray, Andrea Marcusa, Lisa Lanser-Rose, Andrew Stancek, Luke Tennis, Emily Hoover, James LaRowe, Paul Enea, Kris Willcox, Christina Simon

Calling All Emerging Writers!

Enter the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction

Deadline: 1 May 2021

This contest is specifically for writers who have yet to publish their fiction in book form. Submit your short story (maximum: 3,500 words) by 1 May 2021 at 11:59 p.m. PDT for a chance to win $1000 (Canadian) and publication!

Entry fee is discounted and comes with a one-year print subscription to The Malahat Review.

$25 (Canadian) for each entry from Canada; $30 (Canadian) for each entry from the USA; $35 (Canadian) for each entry from elsewhere.

Go here for full contest guidelines.

Missouri Review Miller Audio Prize Winners 2018

Self joined this contest with her friend Morgan Cooke, the inaugural year of the prize, in 2014. The story we did was “Spores.” We did not win, but self has always kept tabs on the contest winners.

2018 contest winners have just been announced.

Here’s the link to the Contest homepage.

You can listen to past winners via the link.

Who knows, maybe one day self will feel bold enough to try again.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Self’s Apocalypse

Got a rejection from Oxford American today. Nevertheless.

Self has decided to submit a short story collection to a contest.

Story # 1: The Departure

The Situation:  A mom says good-bye to her son, who’s on his way to a college on the coast. Not five minutes after she waves good-bye and re-enters her house, the world ends. The woman wakes up to find that the roof of her house has cracked wide open, and nothing’s working. She decides to check in with a neighbor across the street, who invites her to share some cake (Did self say yet that she writes dark fiction?)

They each took a chair and faced each other across the kitchen table, the cake between them. The cat was still on Julietta’s lap but seemed to show no interest in food. She simply lay there, as if comatose. Through Mrs. Bautista’s kitchen window, Julietta thought she saw wisps of clouds moving backwards. Far off, somewhere, she imagined a whole bevy of airplanes were getting ready to scramble.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

The Year 2015: Very Stream-of-Consciousness

First Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose. Mary Gaitskill. New York, New York. Carnegie Hall and Dearest Mum (Last night, front row seat, Trio Solisti. They killed Brahms. Absolutely killed it. Three standing ovations. From a New York audience. No joke). Florence & Venice with Niece. “Crackers” in Crab Orchard Review. Fan Fiction (self’s WIP: about Peeta as a prostitute!!!) garners more hits. London-Ireland-York (the last for the first time). Central Park walks. Middlemarch (swoon). Writers Group meet-ups. Twitter Hashtag Games & Folklore Thursday. Victorian Steampunk and Shadowhunters. Believing in dragons. Stay tuned.

Carnegie Center’s Weill Hall, Before the Trio Solisti Concert Last Night

The Future: “First Life”

A short piece self wrote about a classroom of the future has been accepted by Juked.

This was the magazine that chose “The Hand” to win first place in their fiction contest, 2007.

Self still remembers when she got the call. She had to sit down. It seems like yesterday.

She never could have imagined that, eight years later, she’d be writing science fiction. She loves writing when she can play with the sound of the words, which is what she was trying to do with her story, “First Life”:

The human organism has proven itself completely willful. Narcissism results in confusion. My present condition.

And the consequences? The consequences of this confusion?

Well, extinction.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

FLYWAY: 2014 Notes From the Field Contest Winners

Flyway Contest judge Cristina Eisenberg has chosen the following essays as winner and runner-up, respectively, of the latest Notes From the Field contest:

Winner:  Susanna Clark for “House Blend,” which delves “into the stories of the young men behind 2013’s horrific Boston Marathon bombing”

Runner-Up:  Suzanne Menghraj for “Usciolu,” a piece that “tells of the author’s experience on the Mediterranean island of Corsica”

Both pieces will appear in Flyway’s Spring 2015 issue.

Stay tuned.

The Chattahoochee Review: Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction

Announcing The Chattahoochee Review’s Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction!

Judges:  David James Poissant and Marcia Aldrich

Prizes:  $1,000 @ and a 1-yr subscription to The Chattahoochee Review

Contest Deadline:  January 31, 2015

Winner of Calvino Prize Announced by University of Louisville

(And you know, self joined this year. Why else do you think she’d be so interested in the outcome? Don’t look too hard at the list of runners-up, her name isn’t there LOL. The judge was Robert Coover.)

2014 Calvino Prize Winner:  Micah Dean Hicks, “Flight of the Crow Boys”

Runner-Up: Alisa Alering, “The Night Farmers’ Museum”

Finalists:

David James Poissant, “Minotaur”

Jill Birdsall, “Dandelions”

Hubert Vigilla, “Here Be Dragons”

Emily Temple, “My Past and Future Selves Eat Pasta”

Bree Barton, “Sexing the Starling”

Aline Zybum, “The Vending Machine”

Judith Edelman, “The Parchment Is Burning, but the Letters Soar Freely”

Andrea Witzke Slot, “Where Our Hands Rest in the Night”

Caroline Belle Stewart, “Widow”

And the Strangest Twist of All!

Dear blog mistress’s novella, published last year by Vagabondage Press, has been shortlisted for Best Novella of 2013 by the Saboteur Awards!

Which are going to be handed out Saturday a week from today!

In a very cool town which just so happens to be Oxford, England!

And the par-tay will be in the cooler part of Oxford, which self understands is the northern part, in a place called JERICHO TAVERN!

And self really didn’t think she could make it, but suddenly she got a message from her friend Jenny Lewis who teaches at Oxford, who said, “Everyone here’s been talking about it.”

So then self has been kinda stunned, and part of her wants to go into full-on Pity Party Mode (Self has nothing to wear! She’s been re-cycling the same three pairs of jeans for a month!) but another part wants to say:  GET UP, WOMAN!  JUST — GET UP!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.