TMR Editors’ Prize
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Current Issue: 35.1 (Spring 2012)
Poem of the Week- David Kirby: “If Any Man Have an Ear, Let Him Listen”
- Larry Levis: “Labyrinth as the Erasure of Cries Heard Once Within It or: (Mr. Bones I Succeeded. . .’ Later)”
- Amy Newman: “The Day After The Dean of Michigan State College Admits Him To Lansing Sparrow Hospital For Rest, A Naked Theodore Roethke Barricades Himself Behind A Hospital Mattress”
Category Archives: Contest
Audio Announcements
Rachel Yoder: 2011 Audio Contest winner (Prose)
Greg Brownderville: 2011 Audio Contest winner (Poetry)
Ken Cormier: 2011 Audio Contest winner (Self-Recorded Documentary)
Anna Pinkert: 2011 Audio Contest winner (Professionally Recorded Documentary)
We’re excited about many of the new developments with our audio content here at The Missouri Review. We’re excited, for instance, that the opening of our 2012 audio competition follows closely on the heals of the addition of our (free) podcast feed to iTunes. If you’d like to have our weekly podcasts delivered to you, please sign up. And please, if you enjoy what you hear, give us a good rating on the iTunes site. Our podcast feed is so new that it hasn’t yet been rated.
As I already shared in a recent post, Julie Shapiro of the Third Coast International Audio Festival has agreed to serve as a guest consultant for our 2012 Audio Competition, joining TMR’s editors in the final judging round. This year, we’ve also streamlined the competition to three, simple categories–prose, poetry, and audio documentary—in an attempt to eliminate any confusion entrants experienced last year. And, we’ve improved the contest entry process. For your convenience, we now take MP3 recordings by email and accept online payments. (Submissions by mail are still acceptable as well). This should make the competition more economical to enter, especially for those submitting entries from overseas.
We wanted the renaming of our categories to convey that they are fairly open: in each we accept entries with multiple voice tracks, or with other tracks of sound or music, or simply good, clean recordings of entrants’ pieces. Any of these things are acceptable. The “prose” category includes any prose piece: fiction or nonfiction. “Audio documentary” is now open to professionally and non-professionally recorded pieces. Please see our audio contest site for full guidelines.
If you would like to check out previous contest winners and get a sense of the range of work our judges responded to favorably, you can find them in our recent podcasts. We’ve posted our four first-place winners from last year’s competition and plan to post entries from our first-runners up in the coming weeks. (So check back)!
Our 48-Hour Poem Non-Contest: The Winner
When we learned that Terry W. Thompson, of Zanesville, Ohio, released his menagerie of animals and committed suicide last month, we asked for poems written, in 48 hours, in response to the tragedy. It was our first-ever 48-Hour Poem Non-Contest.
We received many entries, but could choose only one winner. He is Joshua Polk, and you can read his winning poem at our tumblr page.
In days to come, we will post to tumblr other entrants to our Non-Contest, authors of which include Roxane Gay, C Wallace Walker, Divya Rajan, Murray Dunlap, and Kate McIntyre and Joe Aguilar. Together their poems make for a fine menagerie of verse, and we hope you’ll come and see it.
Our First-ever 48-Hour-Poem Non-Contest
When I learned about the amateur zookeeper in Zanesville who released his exotic animals and committed suicide, I immediately thought this is exactly the kind of event that should be written about in a poem. When I came down from the wave of enthusiasm that accompanied this thought, I had a depressive moment, as I often do, and worried that perhaps not many poems would be written about the animals in Zanesville after all. I don’t write poetry, so I can’t remedy this situation singlehandedly.
I need your help, so, as TMR’s Social Media Editor, I’d like to announce our first-ever 48-Hour-Poem Non-Contest.
You have 48 hours, after the posting of this blog post, to write a poem about the animal release in Zanesville and send it to themissourireview [at] gmail [dot] com The poem we decide is best will be featured on our tumblr page.
That makes the deadline about noon on Wednesday, October 26th. Because this is a Non-Contest, submissions will not be blind and anyone can enter, except for me. No money will be awarded to anyone.
I call it a Non-Contest because I don’t want this to be in any way confused with our actual contest, the deadline of which came and went a few weeks ago – and because this Non-Contest is not directly affiliated with our magazine, only with our blog and tumblr page.
This is strictly for fun; if you end up writing a really good poem, you’ll probably want to submit it to our magazine as a regular submission – or, better yet, to the Unleashed Exotic Creature Review.
Also, in no way is this an effort to make light of what happened in Zanesville, which was awful and tragic for man and beast alike.
Happy writing.
You Got Questions? I Got Answers! (And good grammar.)
As the contest assistant for the Editors’ Prize contest this year, a large part of my job involves answering questions sent to our contest question inbox. Since we are nearing the deadline to our contest (eight days!) I thought it might be helpful to post some of the most frequently asked questions I receive. That way, instead of frantically sending me an email at 2 a.m. when you’re ready to submit your work, and sitting at your computer biting your nails and waiting for my response all night long, you have an immediate reference to use instead.
So here you go – the most Frequently Asked Questions regarding our contest.
When is the deadline?
October 1st . If you are submitting online, you must do so by midnight of the 1st. If you are submitting a printed manuscript through the mail, then it must be postmarked by October 1st. Otherwise you will be eaten alive by a pack of ravenous wolves.
When will the winners be announced?
The winners of our contest will be announced on our website and blog in January 2012. The winners will be notified beforehand, so there won’t be any surprises. (Although all the winners will be invited to Speer Morgan’s surprise birthday party. Shhh… don’t tell him.)
Can I submit more than one piece per genre?
Sure you can! If you submit them online, then just make sure to upload them separately, and be aware that you will have to pay an entry fee for each submission. Ditto for mail entries.
Are international submissions accepted?
Absolutely! We want ‘em, so send ‘em!
My short story was published in a student literary magazine (or on a blog). Can I still submit my work to your contest?
Unfortunately, no. If your work has been published in print or online, we cannot accept it. However, in the case of the blog, if you can remove your work from the blog, then we will still accept it. So take your masterpiece off your Tumblr and submit it!
Help! I tried to upload my manuscript, and my payment went through, but not my manuscript! What do I do?
Don’t you worry, now. Just email me (see below) with your manuscript as an attachment, and I will add it to our database. Consider that mystery Scooby-Doo’ed.
Can I put my name on my submission, or is this a blind contest?
Our Editors’ Prize contest is not blind. We ask that you include your name and contact information on the first page of your submission. Or, you can use a title page if you prefer. The formatting is really up to you. Just make sure your contact information is easy to read and does not distract from your writing. So that means no size 18 Wingdings headers and footers. Please and thank you!
I sent in the wrong copy of my story. Can I resubmit it?
Only if there are major differences between your original story and the one you submitted. Meaning, if the “wrong copy” of your story is wrong because you made a few typos, or forgot to rename your protagonist Steve instead of Prince William – then you don’t need to worry about resubmitting. Mistakes happen, even in the best writing. Your story will not be deemed unworthy of our prize because of a few comma splices.
However, if you sent your poetry collection “An Ode to Laguna Beach” when you meant to send “An Ode to Jersey Shore,” then absolutely, you may resubmit. Upload your new manuscript online, just as you did before. You will have to pay again, but we will give you a refund for the second payment. Simply email me and explain the situation, and we will take care of it. If you are unsure whether or not you should resubmit, then just ask me.
Will the contest accept simultaneous submissions?
Yes, we will. However, you must make sure to contact us immediately if your manuscript is selected for publication at another journal, so we can withdraw it from our contest. We don’t want to end up in a love triangle with your manuscript and another journal – it’s just too painful.
If you haven’t submitted to our contest yet, then hop to it! And if you have any questions, no matter how absurd or silly they may seem, please feel free to send me an email at contest_question@moreview.com. If you don’t, then I will be out of a job. So ask away!
What? A free digital issue of TMR?
I have to admit that when I joined the staff here last year and learned that TMR offers subscriptions in digital format (and has for some time) I was a bit skeptical. I love to hold a book in my hands—love the texture and heft of it and the aesthetic pleasure of simply flipping through the pages of a well-laid out journal. Sure, I appreciated the fact that we offered our subscribers the choice of a more environmentally friendly format, but environmental concerns aside, I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose digital over the pleasures of print. I was perplexed, therefore, to learn that over one fourth of the entrants to our contests do go digital when choosing their subscription and that that number climbs a little every year.
Then, about six months ago, a digital subscription to the journal mysteriously appeared in my inbox one day. I don’t actually know where it came from—a gift from the gods of cyberspace, I guess. Or maybe someone here at TMR decided to give all of us on staff free digital access; I never really looked into it. What I did do, though, was open the link and begin to browse TMR in its digital manifestation—or should I say, glory. I’m not kidding. The online version of the journal is gorgeous; the images are crisp, the layout (in which you are able to view two facing pages at once) is no different than in the print version, and if anything, the colors appear deeper and more vibrant on the screen than on paper. What really won me over, however, was the audio component: the clean, articulate vocals and the clear quality of the recording add a new dimension of aesthetic richness. Whether I want to hear a beautiful reading of one of my favorite poems in an issue, or whether I want to experience the entire journal (which I don’t always have time to read) while cleaning my house or walking to work, I can.
So yes, I confess, I’m a believer: a digital journal subscription can be a wonderful thing. While I still prefer to own a book in hard copy than the Kindle version or some other variety of e-book, I think that when it comes to literary journals, digital is actually a nice compromise. I’ll hold onto my favorite books, but eventually, journals, newspapers, and magazines all go.
While many TMR readers may still very well be skeptical about the beauty of a digital subscription, they don’t have to take my word for it. I hereby invoke the gods of cyberspace to grant you free access, if you follow this link, to the digital version of our Spring 2011 issue. Magic. You can browse it, download it to your desktop, and listen to the audio to your heart’s content.
This issue also happens to be the one in which last year’s Editor’s Prize winners appear. If you’re thinking of submitting to our contest this year, you can check out this contest issue to get a sense of the kind of work that has won in the past. Finally, don’t forget that your submission fee to the contest gets you a one-year subscription to TMR at a discounted rate and that that subscription is available in print or digital.
Enter Our Editors’ Prize in July!
Our Editors’ Prize is now open for submissions! This will be the 21st year of our Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, and we’re really delighted to be able to showcase the work of a few great writers, and toss a smorgsabord of love (publication in our Spring 2012 issue, $5000 in prize winnings, flown into Columbia for a reading and all-around fun weekend, shameless self-promotion on our site, etc.) to deserving authors. Finalists often are also selected for publication: our most recent issue has finalists in both fiction and poetry. What we’re trying to say (write?) is that this is the best contest ever.
Notice these two editors don't have Successories art on their walls.
We receive a ton of submissions to the Editors Prize, for which we are really grateful, and the sooner we can get started reading, the better. As our contest editor Claire McQuerry noted last year, submitting early to our contest is good. So, too, is submitting online, which is easy to do by going here. As an added incentive, all entries received in the month of July that request a digital subscription will receive a fifth issue of The Missouri Review for free! Five for the price of four!
We’re really looking forward to reading your work. Good luck!
Michael Nye is the managing editor of The Missouri Review.