TMR Blog » Editors’ Prize contest

The Early Bird Special

Michael — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:42:20 +0000

To many readers of the literary journal scene, Jacob Appel is a familiar name. He’s published in a slew of places such as AGNI, StoryQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Boston Review, to name just a few. Jacob also won our 2007 Editors’ Prize with his story “Creve Coeur.” You can purchase the issue with his winning story here.

In the January/February 2009 issue of Poets & Writers, Jacob wrote his essay “The Case for Contests” (sadly, it is not available on the PW website). Among the many nuggets Jacob tosses out, there is this: “My best advice is that one should submit to contests early and often.”

We agree! The submission period for our annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize is now open. To celebrate the 20^th year of our contest, we would like to offer you an additional issue of The Missouri Review at no extra cost if you submit your entry during the month of June. Winners in each genre receive $5,000, plus a featured publication in our spring issue—making this one of the top literary prizes in the country. Three finalists in each genre will also receive awards and be considered for publication.

The entry fee of $20 includes a year-long, 4-issue subscription. To take advantage of our special offer, simply submit your entry between June 1^st and June 30^th, and your subscription will automatically be upgraded to include a 5^th issue, in digital format, for free. You may choose to receive the rest of your subscription in hard copy or in digital format. Digital format includes full access to our print version—plus the audio version of the magazine, allowing you to hear every poem, story, and essay performed by either the author (such as Judith Sloan’s 2008 Audio Documentary essay) or a professional reader (such as Kevin McFillen’s reading of Paul Guest’s poetry).

It would be super smart to read our full contest guidelines and then you should absolutely submit your contest entry by mail or online. As always, please feel free to contact us via email at mutmrcontestquestion@missouri.edu if you have any questions about the whole kit-n-kaboodle.

1998 Editors' Prize Winner

Ally — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:15:40 +0000

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. She faces the prospect of orphaning her children, of delivering a child who will die during labor, or of delivering a child who will live briefly and miserably. In her desperation she seeks out miracle cures; she makes a pilgrimage to holy ground and prays that the baby not be a “blue baby or an idiot,” that it be born “modern, a twentieth-century child, with no muck or mire, no caul or purple mother’s marks upon it.” Armed with her prayer and Indian Perfection Medicine that she received from a nun, she faces her labor with mettle and grit. Read more at

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=254

2000 Editors' Prize Winner: "Coney Island in Winter"

Darren — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:42:01 +0000

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 for the androgynous Bob Scheinman, a designer of party dresses, and the story revolves around their relationship, and her own aspirations to become a designer. There’s an odd sexual tension to their relationship from the start that begins to escalate once she makes her designing aspirations apparent to him. He even suggests they make a baby together. However, Bob is dying—it’s never revealed what he is dying of, but it’s not hard to guess. The story has a theme which, interestingly, explores both weight-obsession and androgyny, observing how the fashion world appeals to a fantasy of what women want to become, making the “normal” woman more of an androgynous figure. Read the story:

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=1022

For more information on this year’s contest, click the link on our homepage, or got to http://missourireview.com/contest

1997 Editors' Prize Winner

Ally — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:13:11 +0000

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 is forced to recite Hamlet at the kitchen table. She leaves her violin and takes up the oboe, grateful that it is “virtually impossible to have a solo career as a concert oboist.” Her domineering mother who dreams Julia will one day be center stage as a premier violinist never forgives her, but Julia is happy in her anonymity. Or rather, she is safe. That is until a neighbor begins eavesdropping while she practices. He leaves notes of praise and Julia’s tremor returns. Her borderline agoraphobia forces her to leave her position at the New York Philharmonic and take a position with an orchestra in California. There she lives in blissful solitude until she encounters Margaret and Walter, two unconventional shepherds who gather the lonely and forgotten and feed them tuna casserole and offer them a space in which to be their own imperfect selves. Read more at

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=902

1999 Editors' Prize Winner–"Tad Lincoln's Ladder of Dreams"

Darren — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:39:02 +0000

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 in effective detail. It is not until the second page that we discover the father is Abraham Lincoln. And it is not until this same page that we discover the narrator of the piece is someone who could not have witnessed the death presented so vividly in the first scene. The narrator is Thomas (Tad) Lincoln, the third son of Abraham Lincoln. The dying boy was the first son, who died before Tad was born, so this scene is his re-imagining of what happened, perhaps constructed from events he has been told, or perhaps simply what he feels must have happened. We soon learn that Tad, born with a cleft lip, is not only living in the shadow of the first son’s death, but also in the shadow of the second son, his older brother Willie, whose features—his eyes and lanky frame—are more like his father’s. Tad’s imagination continues to be a dominant presence in the story, often exceeding what he would actually know, often revealing to us his father’s thoughts as if they were his own. He imagines what his father sees, what he fears. Lincoln is shown from the perspective of a son who is amazed that his father has attained a god-like stature to the people around him. The son imagines Lincoln’s fear of death, and his determination to do what is right in the face of this death, and his desire to go back to a normal life. But death is never far away in the story. The numerous family tragedies that Thomas witnesses encompass a meditation on death which is both thoughtful and moving. There are many quietly powerful moments in the story. There is honesty in the prose. There is detail in the description which goes beyond the researched aspects of the story, making the reader accept the truth of the piece. There is verisimilitude, one of the more difficult tricks to pull off in a period piece. Read the story at:

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=179

For more information on this year’s contest, click the link on our homepage, or got to http://missourireview.com/contest

1996 Editors' Prize Winner

Ally — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:09:57 +0000

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 car offers her a ride and she accepts despite her awareness of the dangers. The bulk of the story occurs as these two traverse a relatively short distance, and the threat the stranger poses is real. While Annie is caught between what might happen and what does, she wrestles with the contradictory messages she has received about sex: that she has power over men, and that men will hurt her for that power. Read more at

http://missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=994

2002 Editors' Prize Fiction Winner: "Rationing"

Darren — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:36:42 +0000

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 story examines the relationship of the father and son and how it was affected by the lingering changes in Japanese culture after Hiroshima. See the story at:

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=1087

For more information on this year’s contest, click the link on our homepage, or got to http://missourireview.com/contest

1995 Editors' Prize Winner

Ally — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:18:40 +0000

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 glasses. A blue work shirt and jeans. Cowboy boots, very tooled. But the grin is center stage.” He returns as a radon inspector. Later, he will be a tree trimmer. The sexual tension is palpable. There is a long and hidden history between these two, seventeen years of visits from the Incredible Appearing Man, during which time the narrator marries another man and has a son. Her marriage is healthy and happy, her husband, kind. The Man, on the other hand, is music and philosophy and passion; he is gone for years at a time and reappears like a spirit sent to lure her back to their origin. He is her dream and her husband is her life. The great success of the story lies in the way Galyan captures the compromise that is often inherent in love lived. Read more at

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=2091

2003 Editors' Prize Fiction Winner: "Custodian"

Darren — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:29:50 +0000

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 fathered the child with one of the rich girls who attends the private school, and has moved in with the girl and her mother, and doesn’t want his father coming around because he is worried that he will embarrass him. Meanwhile, Manny is trying to take care of an old friend who is suffering debilitating complications due to ill-management of diabetes. The two stories intersect as Manny tries to give his son a lesson in responsibility. Read the story for yourself at:

http://www.missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=71

For more information on this year’s contest, click the link on our homepage, or go to http://missourireview.com/contest

1994 Editor's Prize Winner

Ally — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:03:31 +0000

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. With no wife or children, retirement threatens a future of unbroken solitude until Ward advertises his carpentry services and is contacted by Trudi, a woman he went to high school with. Trudi, a hard-edged, Native American with a granddaughter in tow, hires Ward to fix up her house, and over the course of the weeks that follow, Ward gets his first real glimpse of the life he might have had had he married, and his first glimpse of hope that it’s not too late. Read the story at

http://missourireview.com/content/dynamic/text_detail.php?text_id=985