G&A: The Contest Blog

The Story Prize, the annual twenty-thousand-dollar award for a short story collection, closed its 2011 competition entry pool earlier this month—and now its blog is offering a close look at the writers whose books were nominated.

Authors such as Danzy Senna, William Lychack, Joseph McElroy, Ana Menendez, and Shann Ray, all of whom had collections published this year, discuss their writing processes, sources of inspiration, and the books that made them want to write.

In today's post, Menendez, nominated for her collection Adios, Happy Homeland! (Black Cat), emphasizes practice and training over "witchcraft or pure chance" as key to the creation of our masterpieces, with James Joyce and Vincent Van Gogh to back her up. Lychack, nominated for his second book, The Architect of Flowers (Mariner Books), discusses the importance of another art—judo—to achieving an understanding of balance and dedication in the writing process. And Alan Heathcock, nominated for Volt (Graywolf Press) breaks down his approach to writing into six steps. Thirty-five nominee discussions are currently posted as part of the running series.

The judges are having a word on the blog, as well. Breon Mitchell, a professor of comparative literature who is joined on the panel by Sherman Alexie and Louise Steinman, reveals what the jury is looking for in a Story Prize submission: "Samuel Beckett once said that most people could only enjoy a text if it reminded them of something else they had read. We enjoy hearing echoes of earlier texts in a new one, like musical motifs borrowed from compositions of another age. Yet we also set a high value on originality—we want to be surprised, not just by a turn of events, but by some element we may never have encountered before."

A shortlist of three collections entering the final running will be announced in January, and the winner of the Story Prize will be named on March 21 at a ceremony in New York City.

Beginning next fall the childhood home of author and humorist James Thurber will open its doors annually to one writer for a monthlong retreat.

The John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence of Thurber House, located in Columbus, Ohio, will receive a stipend of four thousand dollars and a private, two-room apartment in which to develop a work-in-progress.

The inaugural residency will be offered to a nonfiction writer, in honor of the prize's namesake, the late author John E. Nance, whose work in the genre includes books on the Tasaday people of the Philippines, where he was an Associated Press bureau chief, and the biography of a master potter. In subsequent years, the award will be given in other genres.

Eligible writers for the 2012 award must have published one book of nonfiction (including creative nonfiction) within the past three years or have a book under contract. The most recent book or manuscript, as well as a brief application, must be submitted to Thurber House by March 15. Complete guidelines are available on the Thurber House website.

Midwestern indie press Milkweed Editions has recently launched a new prize for poetry, open exclusively to poets currently residing in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

The annual Lindquist & Vennum Prize will award ten thousand dollars and publication of a book-length manuscript.

This year's contest will be judged by poet Peter Campion, author of The Lions (2009) and Other People (2005), both published by University of Chicago Press. Campion is a regional resident himself, living in Minneapolis and teaching in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota.

The competition opened for submissions earlier this week and will continue to accept entries until January 31, 2012. A winner will be announced next April, just in time for National Poetry Month.

For complete guidelines and information about eligibility, visit the Milkweed Press website.

It was a big evening for poetry last night on Wall Street. At the National Book Awards, John Ashbery was honored for his lifetime achievement in the art, Nikky Finney won the award in poetry for her collection Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books), and in nonfiction, Stephen Greenblatt took the prize for The Swerve (Norton), an exploration of Lucretius's poem "On the Nature of Things." As poet Ann Lauterbach put it in her introduction to Ashbery, "I thought I should point out, since nobody else has, that we are occuping Wall Street."

Poets—who Ashbery asserted in his acceptance speech, are very much distinct from writers—weren't the only voices that rose to recognition last night. In fiction, Mississippi native Jesmyn Ward won for her second book, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury). Ward remarked in her acceptance speech that she is only at the beginning of her life's work, to write about "the poor, and the black, and the rural people of the South, so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, as fraught, as lovely, and important as theirs."

In the young adult category, Thanhha Lai won for her Vietnam War–era coming-of-age novel, Inside Out & Back Again (Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers).

Each of the winners received ten thousand dollars, and the finalists were awarded one thousand dollars.

In the video below, Finney reads her poem "Penguin Mullet Bread."

Twenty-nine-year-old Mexico City fiction writer Majo Ramírez has been awarded the second biennial Aura Estrada Prize, an honor that affords a young Spanish-language writer money, publication, and up to eight months of time at writers colonies in Italy, Mexico, and the United States.

Named for the late Mexican writer Aura Estrada, who was a student at both Columbia University and Hunter College in New York City when she died at the age of thirty, the prize is given specifically to a woman prose writer, of either U.S. or Mexican citizenship, under thirty-five.

Ramírez receives ten thousand dollars and publication of her work in Spanish Granta, as well as invitations to four residency programs. She is offered retreats of up to two months each at Ledig House in Omi, New York; Santa Maddalena in Tuscany, Italy; Ucross in Wyoming; and Villa Guadalupe in Oaxaca, Mexico.

This year's prize jury included authors Daniel Alarcón, Jorge Luis Boone, Carmen Boullosa, and Cristina Rivera Garza. The founder of the award is Estrada's husband, the author Francisco Goldman, whose most recent novel, Say Her Name (Grove Press, 2011), centers on their marriage and the aftermath of Estrada's death.

For information on the requirements for entry into the competition, visit the Aura Estrada Prize website.

Up against competition that included debut novels by Benjamin Hale, who recently won the Bard Fiction Prize, and Orange Prize winner Téa Obreht, Irish author Lucy Caldwell won this year's Dylan Thomas Prize for her second novel, The Meeting Point (Faber and Faber, 2011). The author, born in 1981, whose first book, Where They Were Missed (Viking, 2006), was shortlisted for the award in 2006, received a prize of thirty thousand pounds (approximately $47,700).

"The Meeting Point is a lyrical modern day parable set in Bahrain depicting the crises in the faith and marriage of an Irish woman, and her relationship with a troubled Muslim teenager," judge and prize founder Peter Stead said of Caldwell's novel, the Guardian reported. "It is a beautifully written and mature reflection on identity, loyalty, and belief in a complex world. We have no doubt that this is yet another significant step in what will undoubtedly be a striking career."

Also shortlisted for the 2011 award, given annually for a work of poetry or fiction by a writer age thirty or younger, were poet Jacob McArthur Mooney and debut novelist Annabel Pitcher. Stead was joined on the judging panel by Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, poets Kurt Heinzelman and Mererid Hopwood, fiction writer and inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize winner Rachel Trezise, and cultural broadcasters Kim Howells and Allison Pearson.

In the video below, Caldwell reads from her winning book at San Francisco's Litquake festival last month.

Twenty-eight-year old novelist Benjamin Hale adds the Bard Fiction Prize to his list of honors. Author of The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, the story of a self-aware and morally-engaged chimpanzee published last January by Twelve, Hale will receive thirty thousand dollars and a semester-long appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Hale was awarded a provost's fellowship from the University of Iowa to complete his first novel. The manuscript was awarded a Michener-Copernicus Award, and, after publication, was selected for a number of "best of" lists including Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers roundup.

Among the past winners of the Bard Fiction Prize, given annually to a fiction writer under forty, are Samantha Hunt, Fiona Maazel, Salvador Plascencia, and Peter Orner. Last year's recipient was thirty-year-old Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! (Knopf, 2011) and St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Knopf, 2006).

Applications for the 2013 award will be accepted until July 15, 2012. Visit the Bard website for more details.

In the video below, Hale discusses his ideal writing spaces, his unintentional pet word, and the importance of confidence for a (capital w) writer.

Another deadline extension came across our desks this week, for a story contest offering publication to a female-identified writer of any nationality.

Kore Press is now accepting submissions of stories, written in English and coming in at fewer than twelve thousand words, until November 30.

The winner will receive one thousand dollars and the winning work will be published as a chapbook by Kore Press, a Tucson, Arizona–based publisher of literature by women. The chapbooks are bound by hand and distributed via the press's website.

The writer who will select this year's winner has not yet been confirmed, but past judges include Tayari Jones, Antonya Nelson, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

For more information about how to submit a story, and to learn more about the mission of the press, visit the Kore website.

Each summer Robert Frost's New Hampshire farmhouse, nestled on a country road with a view of the White Mountains, opens up to one resident poet.

This year, writers "at an artistic and personal crossroads comparable to that faced by Robert Frost when he moved to Franconia in 1915" have an extra few weeks to apply for the opportunity, until the end of November.

The residency, which is available for six to eight weeks between July 1 to August 31, offers a poet exclusive use of the non-public rooms of the house (part of it is a museum). The poet will also give a series of regional readings—Dartmouth College will be one of the stops—and in turn will receive a one-thousand-dollar honorarium.

Aside from the spirit of Frost himself, one might find evidence of contemporary luminaries who have recently spent time living at the farm. Among past resident poets are Robert Hass, Major Jackson, Cleopatra Mathis, Katha Pollitt, and Mary Ruefle. Emerging writer K. A. Hays (Dear Apocalypse, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009) won last summer's residency.

Visit the Frost Place website for guidelines on applying before November 30.

In the video below, a reading of "The Road Not Taken" by Frost accompanies a tour of the woods and poetry trail around the poet's farmhouse.

Celebrating the kickoff of National Novel Writing Month, the website HubPages, a sort of micro-blogging community, is holding a no-fee writing contest—for poets as well as fiction writers. Prizes of five hundred dollars, one hundred dollars, and fifty dollars will be given to writers in both genres, and one overall winner will be offered publication of a poetry or story collection via self-publishing outfit Smashwords (though editing of the manuscript is not part of the prize).

Writers are invited to create a HubPages login and then publish the works they wish to enter as "hubs," or short posts that are housed on the website under a variety of topic headings: poems and poetry, creative writing, and so on. Every post must be accompanied by a photo (a separate photo competition is also being held in conjunction with the writing contests).

The winners, to be announced on December 2, will be selected by judging panels made up of staff members and HubPages users pulled from the more than two-hundred-thousand registered with the site. Entries may be posted (with the tag "contest") until November 22.

Complete guidelines, including links to the profiles of each panelist, are available on the Hub Patron of the Arts web page.