Narrative First Annual Poetry Contest Winners

Narrative Magazine has announced the winners of their first annual poetry contest:

Alice Jones, First Place
Anne Marie Rooney, Second Place
Tomas Q. Morin, Third Place

Finalists
Mermer Blakeslee
Scott Chellener
Peter Filkins
Luisa A. Igloria
Shane Lake
Chloé Yelena Miller
Amy Newman
Barbra Nightingale
Ashley Skabar
Christie Towers

Open to fiction and nonfiction: the Fall 2009 Story Contest, with a $3,250 First Prize, a $1,500 Second Prize, a $750 Third Prize, and ten finalists receiving $100 each. All entries will be considered for publication. Contest deadline: November 30, 2009.

Indie Bookstore Survival

Clay Shirky has some advice for local bookstores in his post Local Bookstores, Social Hubs, and Mutualization.

New Lit on the Block :: Eudaimonia Poetry Review

Eudaimonia Poetry Review is new on the web and well put-together by John Boyle, chapbook editor; Elaine Burnet, art editor; Kris Clements, reviews editor; Scott Forence, production design; Allison McEntire, poetry editor.

Publishing poetry and reviews of both new and classic works of poetry, the first issue includes works by Bob Mohrbacher, Liz Garcia, William Doreski, Derek Phillips, Kimberly Sherman, Clay Carpenter, M.V. Montgomery, Joel Solonche, Noah Lederman, Jay Snodgrass, Steven Joyce, Jill Caputo, Samuel Piccone, Caleb Puckett, Cesca Janece Waterfield, Angela S. Patane, Fredrick Zydek.

Eudaimonia is open for submission until November 30 for its next issue (ars poetica on the pursuit of happiness: Ars Joetica) , and is accepting submissions for its first chapbook contest until December 31.

Jobs

The English Department at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO anticipates an August 16, 2010 opening for a 9-month, non-tenure-track Creative Writing (Poetry) Instructor.

The University of Michigan-Flint invites applications for a tenure-track position in Creative Writing at the Assistant Professor level beginning in Fall 2010. Thomas C. Foster, English Department. Review begins Jan 4.

Assistant Professor of English - Creative Nonfiction Writing, Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN. Susan Hauser, Chair Department of English.

The Department of English and Writing in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Tampa seeks a candidate for an Assistant Professor of English, tenure track, in creative writing (poetry) to begin August 2010.

Bennington College (VT) seeks two published writers of distinguished literary accomplishment to teach literature and writing to highly motivated undergraduates

CFS Page Updated

Calls for Submissions updated - lots of quality publications, anthologies, and inaugural issues looking for fresh, new, writers and established voices. Contact me if you have a CFS you'd like considered for listing: denisehill_at_newpages_dot_com

New Lit Mag Reviews Posted

NewPages Literary Magazine Reviews for November include:

Asia Literary Review
Cimarron Review
Columbia Poetry Review
Grain
Identity Theory
Image
Irish Pages
Parnassus
Prairie Schooner
Seneca Review
TriQuarterly
Wallace Stevens Journal

NewPages Writing Contest Guides

Contests
NewPages Guides to quality writing contests are regularly updated. NewPages lists both contests for individual works of writing as well as for books and chapbooks.

Sponsored Contest Listings - newest listings at the top of page
Full Contest List - arranged by deadline date

Seven Stories Offers Free Books

From Ashley Brooke Roberts, Seven Stories Press:

In honor of the festival of brutal late-capitalist commerce that the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, has become in America, Seven Stories Press wishes to offer — as our contribution to the alternative tradition of celebrating the day after Thanksgiving as Buy Nothing Day — free copies of some of our titles, drawn from the Seven Stories list of titles featuring voices of conscience and works of the imagination from authors including Howard Zinn, Ariel Dorfman, Kristin Dawkins, Kate Braverman, Barry Gifford, Nelson Algren, Rick DeMarinis, Hattie Gossett, Ralph Nader, and more.

The free titles will be available from noon to 4 PM EST on Friday, November 27, 2009. We’ll have a limited number of copies available of each title, which will be up on our website soon. Each customer can take a copy of one book, which will ship with a free catalog and a chapbook containing the opening chapters from our Fall 2009 lead fiction title, The Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong. No payment of any kind is required — no book price, no shipping, nothing. The books are absolutely free. All that’s required is that you create an account with sevenstories.com, allowing you to buy books from us in the future at a 25% discount, if and when you choose.

This is a perfect chance to discover some of the authors from the Seven Stories Press list, and to intellectually arm yourself for the coming holiday season. Keep up to date by following our Twitter and Facebook feeds, and we’ll see you on Buy Nothing Day 2009.

Glimmer Train September Fiction Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their September Fiction Open competition. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers for stories with a word count range between 2000-20,000. No theme restrictions. The next Fiction Open competition will take place in December. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Carrie Brown [pictured] of Sweet Briar, VA, wins $2000 for “Bomb.” Her story will be published in the Fall 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in August 2010.

Second place: Ken Barris of Cape Town, South Africa, wins $1000 for “Life Underwater.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Third place: Lydia Fitzpatrick of Brooklyn NY, wins $600 for “Ellijay.”

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Glimmer Train has also selected the 50 winning entries for their Best Start competition. Each wins $50 and makes Glimmer Train’s Best Start list.

Deadline soon approaching!

November Short Story Award for New Writers: November 30

This competition is held quarterly and is open to writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Word count should not exceed 12,000. (All shorter lengths welcome.) Click here for complete guidelines.

New Lit on the Block:: Mythium

Mythium: The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Culture is the "brainchild of award-winning author and educator, Crystal E. Wilkinson and visual artist/graphic designer, upfromsumdirt (ronald davis)." The subtitle of the magazine goes into greater depth as to its mission: "Celebrating Writers of Color and the Cultural Voice." According to Davis, "our goal is to provide an outlet for those ethnic writers not immediately focused upon through other journals."

Published biannual, this first issue is overflowing with contributors, but maintains a slim 120 or so pages of content - which includes multiple submissions from some authors.

Featured in this first issues are Michael Harper, Torie Michelle Anderson, David Keali'i, Ernest Williamson III, Opal Palmer Adisa, Kyla Marshell, Reginald Harris, Remica Bingham, Rickey Laurentiis, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Andre Howard, Truth Thomas, Sankar Roy, Alan King, Tolu Jegade, Michael Martin, Tara Betts, Derrick Weston Brown, K. Danielle Edwards, Rane Arroyo, Honoree Fannone Jeffers, Myronn Hardy, Peju Adeniran, Saudade, Shannon Gibney, Tuere T.S. Ganges, and Pamela Jackson.

Mythium is accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for their next issue.

Free Lunch to Cease Publication

Ron Offen, the editor of Free Lunch, is not longer able to continue his work on the publication, Free Lunch. The Autumn issue, Number 42, is being prepared for mailing, and will be the final issue. The staff have asked writers to not send any further submissions to the magazine. Those submissions that have been received with return postage will be returned as soon as possible.

River Styx "Games" and Winners

The theme for issue 80 of River Styx is "Games" - which broadly interpreted includes works about "soccer games, hoop games, board games, card games, kid games, bedroom games, carnival games, even wild game." As Editor Richard Newman introduces the issue: "The best games, as well as the best writing about games, always enact something larger than the actual game."

Also included in this issue are the works by winners of the 2009 River Styx International Poetry Contest, as selected by Stephen Dunn: Michael Derrick Hudson, Michale J. Grabell, and J. Stephen Rhodes.

New Lit on the Block :: Super Arrow

Independently run online and based in St. Louis, Missouri, Super Arrow is edited by Amanda Goldblatt, a writer, teacher, scrapper, and recent MFA grad. Her interest is in creating a new online writing-and-art space focused chiefly on creative experiment and community.

The first issue includes works from Jaffa Aharonov (nonfiction), Joe Collins (fiction), Jennifer Denrow (fiction/poetry), Andy Fogle (nonfiction), Roxane Gay (fiction), Maggie Ginestra (poetry), Joseph Goosey (poetry), Jay Thompson (poetry), Kit Kennedy (poetry), Ben Spivey (fiction), Kyle Winkler (fiction), and art from Scott Alden, Kelda Martensen, and Jason Vivona.

Coach House Fiction Sale

Through the month of November, buy one Coach House fiction book from their online store at regular price, get the second one half off. A great deal with no stupid membership fees. How refreshing.

Marvin Bell Q&A

The newest issue of Third Coast includes an excerpt from a November 2007 Q&A session Marvin Bell gave to students and faculty of Western Michigan University as part of the Gwen Frostic reading series. The editors note that Bell began the session with: "Since this is being recorded I'd like to say my name is James Dickey!" He goes on to discuss his writing habits, the challenges of writing political poetry, the poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," and the influence of his being a musician in his poetry.

Chick-fil-A Cow Calendar Goes Literary

I've never had a Chick-fil-A anything, and I'm not even sure we have them in this area, but apparently their calendar is a hit with their customers. This year, the cow characters are shown in scenes which represents famous works of literature. Funny how some of these most famous works can be so well-known and recognized, but have probably gone unread. I guess that's the power of literary reference. Or movies. Or Spark Notes. Or, now, a chicken sandwich.