Five weeks after the deadline for the 2009 SLS Unified Literary Contest, the sponsoring organization, Summer Literary Seminars, has announced that final judges Ann Lauterbach and Lynne Tillman have chosen winners from a pool of around nine hundred submissions. Program administrator Mike Spry described the contest in a press release as "one of our largest and most representative to date."
The first-place winners, fiction writer Caron A. Levis (for her story "Permission Slip") and poet Elizabeth Senja (for three poems), will receive airfaire, housing, and tuition to attend the Summer Literary Seminars program in either Lithuania or Kenya. Levis's story and Senja's poems will be published in Fence as well as participating literary journals in Canada, Russia, Lithuania, Kenya, and Italy.
The second-place winners, fiction writer Rachel Cantor ("Confessions of a Cerebral Lover") and poet Ravi Shankar, will receive full tuition; the third-placers, fiction writer Lisa Gornick (The Barberini Princess") and poet Michael C. Peterson, will receive partial tuition.
The winners were supposed to have the choice of attending Summer Literary Seminars in Italy, but that program has been rescheduled for 2010 due to the economy. Some interesting fine print at the bottom of the announcement page of the SLS Web site speaks to this sort of unexpected change:
"Please note that SLS programs, including those offered as a prize for this contest, may be subject to change or cancellation at any point, and without prior warning. If a winner has selected to attend a program that is cancelled or changed, they may elect to attend a future program instead or to receive a cash prize of US$1,500, prize in full. Summer Literary Seminars also reserves the right to substitute a cash prize of $1,500 for any prize offered, and at their sole discretion.
"All SLS programs, as described in its publications, brochures and on the website, may be subject to change or cancellation, without prior warning, and neither the Summer Literary Seminars and its employees, affiliates, or agents shall be responsible or liable for any expenses or losses that may be sustained because of these changes or cancellations."