Submissions Open for Sewanee Review Contest

G&A: The Contest Blog
7.6.18

The Sewanee Review is currently accepting submissions to its inaugural Fiction & Poetry Contest, given for a short story and a group of poems. The winners will receive $1,000 and publication in the Winter 2019 issue. Dan Chiasson will judge in poetry, and Danielle Evans will judge in fiction.

Using the online submissions system, submit one to three poems or a story of up to 10,000 words with a $30 entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Sewanee Review, by is July 31. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Poetry judge Dan Chiasson is the poetry critic at the New Yorker and the author of four poetry collections, most recently Bicentennial (Knopf, 2014). Fiction judge Danielle Evans is the author of the story collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Riverhead Books, 2010).

Established in 1892, the Sewanee Review is one of the oldest literary quarterlies in the country. The review, which publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, has recently published work by poets Erin Adair-Hodges and Heather McHugh and fiction writers Andrea Lee and Justin Taylor.

Read more about the journal’s editorial focus and redesign under editor Adam Ross in the Poets & Writers online exclusive “The Sewanee Review at 125.”

Procrasti-what?

The Time Is Now
7.5.18

What do you do to put off important tasks? The social media hashtag #procrastibaking pulls up thousands of posts of goods baked while more pressing matters may have been at hand. Some procrastibakers claim that it’s part of the creative process and can help overcome writer’s block, that the sensory experience and rhythms of following a recipe’s steps can be conducive to warming up to a creative task. Write a personal essay about your own go-to procrastination method. How does your procrastination activity help or hinder your work? Does it do more than satisfy a desire to feel good and enjoy the present while postponing something else?

From Another Planet

The Time Is Now
7.4.18

Octopuses have unusual characteristics and intellectual abilities that might just be from out of this world. Earlier this year, a group of international scientists published research in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology asserting the possibility that octopuses may have their origins in outer space. Write a short story that makes use of a character who seems bafflingly odd or otherworldly. What sort of behaviors can be pointed out as unusual? What theories do the other characters have about the reasons for this strangeness, and what do these judgments and justifications reveal of the characters making them?

Misheard Words

The Time Is Now
7.3.18

Do digital assistants like Siri and Alexa really understand what you’re saying? Last month, a Portland, Oregon couple’s Amazon Alexa device misinterpreted a series of sentences it overheard as instructions to record a private conversation and send it to an unsuspecting person in their contact list. Write a poem that centers on a misheard conversation between two people. Experiment with different homonyms or homophones, or other ways the sounds of different words or phrases can be misheard. How might the misinterpretation of words create unexpectedly fresh ideas or images?

Academy for Teachers Flash Fiction Contest

G&A: The Contest Blog
6.29.18

Submissions are now open for the Academy for Teachers: Stories Out of School Flash Fiction Contest. An award of $1,000 and publication on the Tin House website will be given annually for a flash fiction story that features a protagonist or narrator who is a K–12 teacher. A second-place prize of $500 and publication will also be given. Best-selling author Cheryl Strayed will judge.

Submit a story of six to 749 words via e-mail by September 16. There is no entry fee. The winners will be announced in January 2019. Visit the website for complete submission guidelines.

A joint venture of the Academy for Teachers and Tin House, the Stories Out of School Flash-Fiction Contest was created to “inspire honest, unsentimental stories about teachers and the rich and complex world of schools.” 

(Photo: Cheryl Strayed; Credit: Joni Kabana)

Breaking a Habit

The Time Is Now
6.28.18

Scientists published a study in Science magazine earlier this month observing that animals have been sleeping more during the day and increasing nocturnal habits in order to avoid interacting with humans who have steadily encroached upon their habitats and territories. Write a personal essay about a time when you felt the need to change a longstanding routine or habit. Was there a pivotal moment that motivated you to make the change or was it more gradual? How has your own flexibility or adaptability changed over the years? 

Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint Wins Graywolf Nonfiction Prize

G&A: The Contest Blog
6.27.18

Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint has won the 2018 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize for her manuscript, Zat Lun. She will receive $12,000 and publication by Graywolf Press.

Of Zat Lun, Graywolf Press editor Steve Woodward said, “Myint’s hybrid approach and incorporation of myth and oral traditions overturn expectations around immigrant narratives, and add layers to her parallel investigations of both her family history and that of Myanmar. The whole team at Graywolf is delighted to see this truly original and bold manuscript join the ranks of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize winners.”

Myint is the author of the lyric novel, The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strive, A Haven (Noemi Press, 2018). She is completing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Denver.

The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize is given biennially for a manuscript-in-progress by a writer not yet established in the genre. Esmé Weijun Wang won the 2016 award for her essay collection, The Collected Schizophrenias, which will be published in February 2019. Other previous winners include Leslie Jamison, Eula Biss, and Kevin Young. Visit the website for more information.

(Photo: Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint; Credit: Dennis Shyu)

Changing Lanes

The Time Is Now
6.27.18

This past spring, the Bairui Plaza shopping mall in Xi’an, China unveiled different colored pathways outside the mall designated specifically for pedestrians with their eyes glued to their cell phones. They have been given a nickname in Chinese roughly translating to “heads-down tribe.” The lanes are intended as a safety measure and relay messages urging walkers to look up and pay attention, including the message: “Please don’t look down for the rest of your life.” Write a short story that involves two characters who are constantly on their cell phones while walking. What happens when they collide on a sidewalk?

Poet to Poet

The Time Is Now
6.26.18

“I wrote an American Sonnet to Wanda Coleman, and I sent it to her. We exchanged letters,” says Terrance Hayes about the inspiration and motivation for his new collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (Penguin, 2018), in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. This week, write a sonnet as an homage to Terrance Hayes, or another favorite poet. What types of imagery, tone, and emotional resonances are inspired as you focus on this poet’s work and life? 

Becoming Cascadian: The Intersection of Bioregionalism and Poetics

Readings & Workshops Blog
6.25.18

Paul E. Nelson serves as founding director of Seattle Poetics LAB (SPLAB) and the Cascadia Poetry Festival. He is the author of American Sentences (Apprentice House, 2015), A Time Before Slaughter (Apprentice House, 2010), and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (Lumme Editions, 2013), and coeditor of the anthologies Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (Leaf Press, 2015) and 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Nelson has been engaged in a twenty-year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia.

Becoming Cascadian was a retreat in Seattle’s diverse Rainier Beach neighborhood—an outgrowth of Seattle Poetics LAB’s Cascadia Poetry Festival. While the festivals are exciting, it takes a great deal of resources to present such an event. The SPLAB Board decided that while we look for funding to continue the festival, it would be good to work on a more intimate level. Becoming Cascadian allowed participants to go deeper into their own writing practices and experiences of place.

There were free public events: a Zen Meditation session at the Seattle University Ecosangha; “The Practice of Outside,” a presentation with P&W–supported writer Andrew Schelling; a tour of Kubota Garden with Seattle University philosophy professor Jason Wirth; and a closing reading at Seattle’s all-poetry bookstore Open Books. In between the public events were breakout sessions offered by participants.

One session was on cultural appropriation. It’s a hot topic in Canada now, as Cascadia includes all of British Columbia west of the Continental Divide. The treatment of First Nations people, as they are called in Canada, is reprehensible, and there’s a lot of anger regarding writers monetizing indigenous culture. Adelia MacWilliam from Cumberland, B.C. led this session.

The Kubota Garden tour, led by Wirth, explored the historic spiritual nature of the garden, the life of Fujitaro Kubota, and the Japanese American history in the neighborhood, including the internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II, an event with eerie similarities to current American xenophobia.

Mark Gonnerman’s session was “Living in Place With Peter Berg and Gary Snyder in Mind.” Snyder has written that, “real people stay put,” which in North America is “a new thing!” Snyder recommends making five hundred year plans and not the ethos of the old bumper sticker that said: “Earth First: Then We Log the Other Planets.” Gonnerman put things into perspective saying we humans are the first species in history “that can prevent their own extinction.”

Schelling’s keynote talk was for “poets and bioregional visionaries,” suggesting we go outdoors and learn something of our bioregion. He contrasted his Southern Rocky Mountain bioregion and Cascadia, noting the difference between the wet, logged, maritime Puget Sound region, and his dry high country. He discussed respective medicine powers the bioregions share, and noted how the Douglas Firs in the high country are puny compared to those in Cascadia. He ended with a story. What may not be well-known about Schelling is that, perhaps through his multi-decade study of Jaime de Angulo, he’s become a master storyteller. After the festival he said:

“To redefine our lives and the places we live by bioregion, rather than by political boundaries, is not the work of a single morning. It will require small cadres of committed people who become nature literate, write instructive poems and essays, and gradually make sense to their neighbors. This program, Becoming Cascadia, was one node in a larger effort that has been developing…. Concluding with poetry gave ceremonial fragrance.”

Support for Readings & Workshops in Seattle is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Photos: (top) Paul E. Nelson (Credit: Bhakti Watts). (middle) Andrew Schelling with Jared Lesing (Credit: Paul Nelson). (bottom) At the Kubota Garden with participants (Credit: Paul Nelson).

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