We are pleased to nominate three entries, one from each genre we published throughout the last year, for the next Pushcart Best of Small Presses Prize.  

“Astronaut” by Caleb True (fiction)

“Bethany is Dead” by Harmony Neal (nonfiction)

“Jellyfish” by Anna Scotti (poetry)

Congratulations to these three and thank you to all our contributors for making our decision difficult.

To everyone, keep sending us the good work. Maybe we’ll see your name up here next year?

Featuring winning work from the 2011 William Richey Short Fiction Contest and an interview with Ian McEwan.  

Take a look and subscribe here.

Judge: Matt Bell will serve as final guest judge.  

Prizes: The author of the winning story will receive $1,000 and publication in Yemassee. Yemassee will publish stories by two runners-up, along with a list of ten finalists. 

Deadline: All entries must be submitted by the November 15th deadline.

Entry Fee: (only!) $10. An entry fee of $10 must accompany each entry. 

Word Limit:  To enter, submit one piece of unpublished short fiction of up to 10,000 words. We welcome multiple story submissions; each story should be entered separately and will require its own entry fee. 

Formatting, Details, Etc: All submissions should be double-spaced. Story title and page numbers should appear on all pages of the entry, but the author’s name should not appear anywhere within the entry. Entries must be submitted through submishmash. Winners will be announced on our website, and all entries will be considered for publication. 

Enter Here.

Congratulations to Karrie Waarala of Ypsilanti, Michigan, whose poem, “A Sudden Blow,” won the 2012 Pocataligo Poetry Contest.  She will receive $500 and publication in our upcoming issue.  Our guest judge was Kate Daniels. 

Congratulations also to the runners-up, Ben McClendon and Anna Scotti. 

A full list of the contest results is below.

Winner: “A Sudden Blow” by Karrie Waarala, Ypsilanti, MI   

 Karrie Waarala holds an MFA from the Stonecoast Program at University of Southern Maine. Her work has appeared is forthcoming in journals such as Iron Horse Literary Review, PANK, The Collagist, Arsenic Lobster, and Radius. Karrie is currently working on finding a home for her collection of wayward circus sideshow poems, upon which she based her one-woman show, LONG GONE: A Poetry Sideshow, which debuted to critical acclaim. She really wishes she could tame tigers and swallow swords.

 Runners-Up:

“Hazards of Perpetual Motion” by Ben McClendon, Flagstaff, AZ.

Ben McClendon is a recent graduate of the creative writing program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where he teaches composition to students willing and unwilling alike. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, The Minutiae, and Redivider. 

“Jellyfish” by Anna Scotti

Anna Scotti’s work appears frequently in Chautauqua, and her poem, “National Geographic Society, 1968,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize this year. Scotti’s work was also recently honored by The Comstock Review and will appear in the next issues of that journal, and in Ontologica and ReadShortFiction.com. Scotti earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles in 2007. She recently finished writing her first YA novel, Big and Bad and How I Got My Life! Back.

Finalists (alphabetical order): 

“Tradition” by Emily Benton

“Litany” by Emma Bolden

“Inside Me” by Abigail Browning

“Whore Psalm” by Matt Dennison

“Two Exchanges” by Brett Foster

“Nerves” by Emily Grise

“Love Poem” by Therin Johns

“Charon Scattering Ashes” by Henry W. Leung

“Brotherring” by Shae Savoy

“Attempts at Flight” by Staci Schoenfeld

You’ve noticed the new website?  Looks good, doesn’t it?  Many thanks to our multitalented (and totally volunteer) editorial staff, who’ve pooled our artistic resources, ideas, and tons of time.  We’ve got a new logo, a totally redesigned look for the issues, and visual artwork in our pages.  We’re really excited to be able to feature both international and regional artists, as well as artists as young as fifteen year-old Eleanor Leonne Bennett of our Issue 19 cover art, who’s had her work in National Geographic and won contests from Europe to the US. 

At AWP, we’re sharing a booth with the MFA program of the University of South Carolina (that’s us)– booth 114.  Please stop by to preview the issues, to play a game, to say hello with handshakes or hugs, and to buy or maybe win your own copies, subscriptions, swag, etc.  The ducks will be making a return appearance this year.  We are really stoked about meeting and mingling.  We’re counting on the general informed public to invite us to all the coolest offisite events.

Our Pocataligo Poetry Contest is still open through the end of March.  Get your submission in before the deluge at the end of the month.  We can’t promise that it’ll have a higher chance of rising to the top that way, but what harm in testing the theory? 

Bragging aside, issues will be shipping in early March.  Subscribers, watch your mailboxes.  Nonsubscribers, get with it already.  

And the rest of you, we hope to see many of you at AWP, and we’ll see your work in our submissions queue soon. 

The author of the winning poem will receive $500 and publication in Yemassee. Two runners-up will also receive publication, and a list of ten finalists will be named.

To enter, submit as a single document 3-5 unpublished poems of any line length. An entry fee of $10 must accompany each entry, and all entrants who provide a mailing address will receive a copy of the issue in which the contest winners appear. We welcome multiple submissions. Each submission requires a separate entry fee.

Formatting: All poems should be submitted in a single document, with no more than one poem per page. The poet’s name should not appear anywhere within the entry. Entries must be submitted through submishmash.

All entries must be submitted by the March 15th deadline. Winners will be announced on our website, and all entries will be considered for publication.

See previous years’ winners here.

Stay tuned for forthcoming redesigned issues featuring our contest winners, killer interviews, and our first ever visual art.  

Thanks to everyone who’s sent us stories to read so far– the titles look promising, and we can’t wait to dig in and find our winners.

To everyone who hasn’t yet submitted, you’re in luck!  The deadline has been extended to December 15th. If you find a bit of holiday downtime, why not polish up a story for us?

$10 to enter, $1000 prize.  It’s a small contest (annually receiving around 200 entries), so do the math– the odds aren’t so bad.  Award-winning author George Singleton will serve as final judge.  Details here.

The entry fee is only $10, and we accept electronic submissions through submishmash.  To submit, see our guidelines here.

We sincerely thank all who participate in our contest, and we look forward to reading your work!