The Missouri Review

We’re pleased to announce the winners of the second annual Audio & Video Competition. We received 211 entries, and the quality was deep in nearly every category. Over the next few weeks we will audition the winners and select runners-up for your listening enjoyment.
Narrative Essay
First place, $1,000: “Dayenu,” by Judith Sloan
First runner-up: “What’s Your Status,” [...]

[Read more →]

 
Last night, the True/False Film Fest (www.truefalse.org) launched its sixth annual festival with the screening of Afghan Star,directed by Havana Marking. First, though, festival co-founder David Wilson announced the winner of the Creative Short category of our annual Audio and Video Competition.
Anne Lewis takes home the top honors with “Separate Vacations,” an animated short about a narrator who [...]

[Read more →]

Unlike some things — the UK lottery, apparently — you can’t win our audio contest if you don’t play. If you’re going to play, though, play to win!
The deadline is Dec. 1, and I know what you’re thinking. Not enough time, right? Then you learn that the payout is as much as $1500 for first prize, and you’re like, [...]

[Read more →]

Visitors to the popular website Poetry Daily can get a taste of the work of poet Todd Boss, who readers and listeners of TMR already know as the poetry winner (and first runner-up) of our inaugural Audio Contest, for his poems “To Wind a Mechanical Toy,” and “Yellowrocket,” respectively. His poem, “To Be Alone [...]

[Read more →]

Dear Contest Submitters,
As you may have noted, we have made a short extension of the deadline to next Wednesday, October 8. In addition to some submitters using the old address, this is the first year we’re being hosted on the university server. Hopefully, all goes well for those submitting. However, if you’re experiencing any slowness [...]

[Read more →]

Our 1998 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize winner was Alice Fulton, a widely published author with one book of fiction and several books of poetry to her credit.  Her story, “Happy Dust,” is set in the early twentieth century on a farm governed by Mamie, a pregnant mother of four who is suffering from tuberculosis.  [...]

[Read more →]

The deadline for this year’s Editors’ Prize is only days away. Continuing our look at previous Editors’ Prize winners, the 2000 fiction entry “Coney Island in Winter” by Dana Kinstler Standefer. It’s the story of a woman, who, concerned for her weight, drinks only iced coffee or Tab for lunch. She works [...]

[Read more →]

Our 1997 Editor’s Prize winner, Anne Miano, was also an author who had not been previously published.  “The Oboist” features a narrator who is, to begin with, a violist.  As her skills progressively improve, attention is increasingly focused on her.  As a result, she develops a tremor that makes violin playing impossible.  She stutters and [...]

[Read more →]

Continuing our look at previous Editors’ Prize winners, the 1999 fiction winner was “Tad Lincoln’s Ladder of Dreams” by Emily Pease. The story opens with the imagery of death–a small boy dying in bed, the sound of rain from an opened window. A mother and father experience a great loss, presented to us [...]

[Read more →]

Our 1996 contest winner, “You Think I Care,” by Deborah Way, is especially exciting because, like our 1994 winner, it was the author’s first publication.  Annie, a 15 year old girl walks down a quiet country road on her way to her boyfriend’s house to “do it” for the first time.  A stranger in a [...]

[Read more →]

As the deadline for this year’s Editors’ Prize fast approaches, we continue our look at previous prize winners. The 2002 Editors’ Prize Winner in fiction was “Rationing” by Mary Yukari Waters. It deals with the relationship of Saburo with his father, a survivor of the World War II bombing of Japan. The [...]

[Read more →]

Lately, I’m totally fascinated by the spaces where people write. This was demonstrated today when my friend Marybeth called to tell me she finished the story she’s been working on for the last year and a half.
“Where did you write it?” I asked, forgetting that I probably should have congratulated her first.
She thought for [...]

[Read more →]

The 1995 Editor’s Prize winner, “The Incredible Appearing Man” by Deborah Galyan, went on to appear in the 1996 edition of Best American Short Stories, and is one of my favorites.  The story opens with the narrator being visited by a man posing as a plumber.  “His panama hat is an odd touch, shadowing dark [...]

[Read more →]

The deadline for this year’s Editors’ Prize is just a few short weeks from now. Continuing our look at previous Editors’ Prize fiction winners, 2003’s “Custodian” by Daniel Coshnear, follows Manny, a janitor at a private high school, who is dealing with his son, a high-school senior, who has suddenly become a father. The son [...]

[Read more →]

Michael Byers won the 1994 Editors’ Prize contest with his story, “Settled on the Cranberry Coast.”  This was Byers’ first publication and the story later appeared in his award winning debut collection, The Coast of Good Intentions.  Ward, aka Frosty, is a recently retired high school history teacher coming to terms with his new life.  [...]

[Read more →]

Continuing our look at previous Editors’ Prize fiction winners, the 2004 winner, “Family Planning” by Valerie Laken, is about Josie and Adrianna, a couple who go to Russia to adopt a child. They face an obstacle that a straight couple would not, in that the Russian government would not permit a lesbian couple to [...]

[Read more →]

The 1993 Editor’s Prize award went to David Borofka for his story, “Epilogue.”  Borofka’s  characters - an adultering priest, a virtuous insurance man, a surgeon with multiple sclerosis, two women who are marriage/family counselors and who are both in disastrous marriages - explore the inevitable chasm between professional identity and life.  In the end, mercy [...]

[Read more →]

The deadline for our 18th Annual Editors’ Prize is less than a month away, and as the submissions start to roll in, we’re finding ourselves a little misty-eyed nostalgic for past editors’ prize winners. Of course, I was not with the Missouri Review for the first 15 years of the contest (so I’m not [...]

[Read more →]

We’re pleased to announce that the second ever Missouri Review Audio & Video Competition is now open and accepting your submissions. You might notice something a little different from last year: the new video category. We’re very excited to see what you can do with this new option. We are also continuing the Narrative Essay, [...]

[Read more →]

On the sleety evening of Saturday, April 12, we had the pleasure of hosting the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Reading and Reception. Despite rampant flight cancelations leading into the weekend, Robert, Jude and Otis were all able to join us. We had an incredible pool of submissions for last year’s contest, but our winners’ readings demonstrated the qualities of freshness and heart that won for them these prizes.

[Read more →]

We’re pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Audio Competition. We received 169 entries, and the quality was deep in nearly every category. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be posting the winning entries on our homepage and packaging the top entries into Podcasts. Our thanks go to Jay Allison of transom.org [...]

[Read more →]

On behalf of this year’s Editors’ Prize contest coordinators Jessica Garratt, Stephanie Carpenter and Darren Pine, we would like to thank everyone who entered this year. The quality of entries in all genres was exceptional, making reading fun but deciding on winners and finalists daunting. Around the office, we had many discussions about [...]

[Read more →]

The 2000 fiction winner of the Editors’ Prize was “Coney Island in Winter” by Dana Kinstler Standefer.  It’s the story of a woman, who, concerned for her weight, drinks only iced coffee or Tab for lunch.  She works for the androgynous Bob Scheinman, a designer of party dresses, and the story revolves around their relationship, [...]

[Read more →]

Due to reported online delays experienced by some submitters to the Editors’ Prize contest, TMR is extending its online submission deadline to Friday, October 5, 2007. We will continue to accept fiction, poetry, and essay entries to the contest through the online submission system until midnight on Friday.

[Read more →]

The story opens with the imagery of death–a small boy dying in bed, the sound of rain from an opened window.  A mother and father experience a great loss, presented to us in effective detail.  It is not until the second page that we discover the father is Abraham Lincoln.  And it is not until [...]

[Read more →]

Our Editors’ Prize winners in the Essay category have pretty much been about serious subjects. We’ve given the prize to heartfelt elegiac memoirs about parents, childhood or the quasi-mythical ’60s. We’ve given it to tense, scary essays about grueling medical dramas. We’ve given it to indignant travel essays . . .

[Read more →]

I discovered Martin Scott’s “Chrome Horse” (our current online “Poem of the Week”) while leafing through old Editors’ Prize issues, and found myself  reading that poem again and again.  Part of the reason I kept re-reading it (I’ll admit) is that I don’t entirely understand the mysterious ultimate tercet.  That said, I wanted to understand [...]

[Read more →]

Michael Byers’s winning story from our 1993 contest is another first publication. “Settled on the Cranberry Coast” tells the mid-life story of solitary characters in the Pacific Northwest. The story’s bachelor narrator, Frosty, recalls his high-school acquaintance, Trudi, as a hardscrabble girl who ran with the kids from the reservation; now, he is a retired [...]

[Read more →]

Throughout this week, we’ll be introducing you to past Editors’ Prize winners. “You Think I Care” by Deborah Way was the first-place story in our 1995 contest. Like many of our winning stories, it was a first publication.
“You Think I Care” is the story of Annie, a shrewd 15-year-old girl who has made the considered [...]

[Read more →]

So the deadline for our first annual Audio Competition is drawing near, and, to be perfectly honest, we still need more submissions.  As with all beginnings, this one is tenuous, touch-and-go, and we need your support to make it a success.  All of us here at TMR think this competition has tremendous potential, and, for [...]

[Read more →]