The Mississippi Review Prize 2009

Awarding $1,000 each in fiction and poetry and publication in the print issue of Mississippi Review

Our annual contest awards prizes of $1,000 in fiction and in poetry. Winners and finalists will make up next winter’s print issue of the national literary magazine Mississippi Review. Contest is open to all writers in English except current or former students or employees of The University of Southern Mississippi. Fiction entries should be 1000-5000 words, poetry entries should be three poems totaling 10 pages or less. There is no limit on the number of entries you may submit. Entry fee is $15 per entry, payable to the Mississippi Review.

Each entrant will receive a copy of the prize issue.

No manuscripts will be returned. Previously published work is ineligible. Contest opens April 2. Deadline is October 1. Winners will be announced in late January and publication is scheduled for May next year. Entries should have “MR Prize,” author name, address, phone, e-mail and title of work on page one.

Postmark deadline: October 1, 2009
Winners announced: Jan 2010
Issue publication: April 2010

Details online –>

Dana Levin’s Graduate Poetry Workshop Rescheduled

Dana Levin’s English 522: Graduate Poetry Workshop has been rescheduled to Wednesdays, 4:00-6:30.

FALL 2009 COURSE DESCRIPTION

Each week we will critique original poetry produced by students. Workshop will focus on revision and ways we can open a poem up to become its strongest and most vivid self, predicated on these ideas: that a poem has an autonomous life apart from the author’s will and intention, and that composition/revision is an act of dynamic relation between you and the poem: what does the poem want you to do with it? How do you find that out? Strange exercises may be assigned to further poem-opening; engaging the unconscious will be a focus. We will also, together, determine what kinds of readings would best advance the class: readings that teach us something about poetic composition and/or the history of contemporary American poetry in relation to zeitgeist-the spirit of the time-and how the individual artist both resists and absorbs his/her historical/cultural/aesthetic moment to produce strong, uncanny and impactful poems. Students will write one critical essay and produce a portfolio of 20 pages, including ten revised pieces.

New Russo Chair: Poet Dana Levin

Poet Dana Levin has accepted an offer to come to UNM as the next Russo Chair in the creative writing program.

Dana is currently the Chair of Creative Writing and Literature at the College of Santa Fe where she’s taught in the creative writing program since 1998. She’s the author of IN THE SURGICAL THEATRE (Copper Canyon 1999) and WEDDING DAY (Copper Canyon 2005). Dana has received numerous awards for her poetry, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN award, an NEA, and an American Academy of Poets Prize.

Dana will be teaching the 522 poetry workshop this fall. That class is scheduled on Thursdays from 4:00-6:30. UPDATE: scheduled for Wednesdays 4-6:30pm

2009 Juked Fiction and Poetry Prizes

Now accepting entries!

Winner in each genre receives $500 and publication in our upcoming print issue, Juked #7.

Final Judges: Dan Chaon (fiction) and Dora Malech (poetry)

Submission Deadline: August 31st, 2009

Entry Fee: $10

Fiction: one story per entry, no length requirement

Poetry: up to five poems (no more than ten pages total) per entry

Complete guidelines at: http://www.juked.com/prize/

About our judges:

Dan Chaon is the author of the best-selling novel You Remind Me of Me. He has also published two short story collections, Fitting Ends and Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. Walter Mosley chose his short story, “The Bees,” to be included in Best American Short Stories 2003, and his story “Big Me” was selected by Michael Chabon as the second prize story in The O. Henry Awards 2001. His new novel, Await Your Reply, will be published in late August 2009. Chaon is the Houck Associate Professor of the Humanities at Oberlin College.

More on Dan:
“Big Me” at The Gettysburg Review
“Raymond Carver” at SmokeLong Quarterly
Interview with The Believer

Dora Malech’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Denver
Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Redivider, and other journals. She was recently
Visiting Lecturer and Primary Convenor for the MA Creative Writing Program at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, New Zealand. Her chapbook, Inside & Elsewhere, came out in 1999.

More on Dora:
“Here Name Your” at The New Yorker
“Makeup” at Poetry
“Oh Grow Up” at Verse Daily

Arcadia Call for Submissions

Arcadia, the new literary journal founded by the MFA students at the University of Central Oklahoma, is calling for submissions in poetry, short fiction, and drama. All styles, whether traditional, avant-garde, or experimental, are welcome. The only criteria are that the work be of merit, establishes a distinct sense of place and voice, and reveals a strong understanding of form. Writers in all phases of their career are encouraged to submit as we are always searching for the emerging artist whose voice is yet to be heard.

Submission information and guidelines can be found at our website:

http://www.libarts.uco.edu/english/arcadia/index.htm

Core Writing Program’s First-Year Writing Awards

The Core Writing Program’s First-Year Writing Awards recognize and
reward outstanding teachers of English 101 and 102. They highlight the diligence and imagination of our Graduate Teaching Assistants and Part-Time Instructors, who work tirelessly to help our first-year students develop the reading and writing skills so essential to higher education.

We received a large number of truly excellent nominations, which made
the decisions deliciously difficult. Thanks to TA Mentor Dan Darling and
his associates for their conscientious deliberations.

Please join me in congratulating these winners of the second annual
First-Year Writing Awards:

Most Innovative Instructor: Felicia Chavez

Best Peer Mentor: Leigh Johnson
Stephanie Spong, Honorable mention

Best Assignment Sequence: Tanaya Winder and Felicia Chavez

Best Emerging Teacher: Stephanie Spong
Carmela Starace, Honorable mention

Outstanding Teacher: Paul Formisano

Sam Tetangco, Honorable mention
Jeremy Ricketts, Honorable mention
Erin Murrah-Mandril, Honorable mention

I hope all the award winners, all of their friends and families, all of
their professors and all of their mentors, will be able join us on May
15 at the EGSA Awards Ceremony to celebrate.

San Diego Writer Honored with Premio Aztlan Prize

Had to mention this, Patricia is a friend of a friend, and is published by UNM Press, and is from my neck of the woods– San Diego!
Congratulations Patricia!

Patricia Santana Honored with Premio Aztlán for Ghosts of El Grullo
The National Latinos Writers Conference and the History & Literary program of the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) have recognized Patricia Santana as the winner of the 2008 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize for her novel, Ghosts of El Grullo. A national literary award established to encourage and reward emerging Chicana and Chicano authors, the Premio Aztlán was founded by renowned author Rudolfo Anaya and his wife Patricia in 1993.

As winner of the Premio Aztlán, Santana receives $1,000 and will give a public lecture during the National Latinos Writers Conference, held at the NHCC in Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 21-23, 2009.

In Ghosts of El Grullo, Yolanda Sahagún is a clever young woman who finds the symbolism in life’s smallest acts and events. She escapes into the world of literature—The Canterbury Tales or stories from Mexican countryman Juan Rulfo—when family dramas heat up, and they often do in a household of nine children overseen by an erratic father and a mother almost too sweet to be true.

Yolanda strives to shape her own identity: as a scholarship honoree at a Daughters of the American Revolution tea party in La Jolla, Yolanda feels out of place until her mother Dolores captivates even the stuffiest ladies with her family stories from the Mexican Revolution. The drive back to their little house in a Palm City immigrant neighborhood where eleven people share one bathroom reminds Yolanda of just how different her life is from the high society ladies of La Jolla and later, from her college peers at UC-San Diego.

When Dolores dies of gallbladder cancer during her freshman year of college, Yolanda’s struggles reach greater magnitudes as her father decides to sell their family home and she and her sisters must care for the younger Sahagúns. She travels to El Grullo, Jalisco, the Mexican village where her parents grew up, and there her subconscious mingles with the ghosts of her family’s past as Yolanda searches for answers and a path from which to navigate family, love, and her higher education.

Santana is chair of the foreign languages department and professor of Spanish at Cuyamaca College in El Cajon, California. Her book Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility (UNM Press) won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and was an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. Ghosts of El Grullo is a sequel to Patricia Santana’s critically acclaimed first novel Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility.

The book is available at bookstores or from UNM Press: (800) 249-7737 or UNM Press.

Hillerman Prize Lives On

The Hillerman Prize lives on! A $10,000 award for the best first mystery
set in the Southwest continues the spirit of Tony Hillerman’s work.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS JUNE 1.

Sponsored by St. Martin’s Press and Wordharvest, the Hillerman Prize will be awarded again in November, 2009 in Albuquerque. The contest is open to self-published books and to authors who have published non-mysteries.

All manuscripts submitted: a) must be original, previously unpublished works of book length (no less than 220 typewritten pages or approximately 60,000 words) written in the English language by the entrants; b) must not violate any right of any third party or be libelous, and c) must generally follow the guidelines.

Complete Guidelines: http://www.wordharvest.com/novel_contest.php

Poetry All Over the Place!

Puerto del Sol will be publishing Anastasia Andersen’s “My daughter thinks safety means spotless”, in the upcoming Spring issue.

…but wait! there’s more!

The e-zine Heavy Bear will feature Anastasia’s “Van Leeuwenhoek”, “slitting the wrists of the old astronomy”, and “Flowers. In bad times” in the Fall Issue #4.

Congratulations! and keep the good news coming!

Mark Behr to Teach Creative Non Fiction

Mark Behr has accepted UNM’s offer to teach the graduate workshop in creative nonfiction this fall. Mark is an associate professor at the College of Santa Fe. He’s currently on sabbatical and living in South Africa. Mark is best known as a novelist, but presently working on a collection of essays.

And check out the Wikipedia entry –>