Photo: Editors’ Prize winners with Jeffrey E. Smith at the Editors’ Prize Reading (4/12/2008): (from left to right) Otis Haschemeyer, Jude Nutter, Jeffrey E. Smith, & Robert Kimber.

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.

Many thanks to the prizewinners for traveling to Columbia to share their work with us. Thanks, too, to the prize’s benefactor, Jeffrey Smith, and to our local friends for braving the unseasonable elements in the name of literature – and mini-quiches.

Those of you who weren’t able to attend the reading can discover the prizewinners’ work in issue 31:1, now available (those of you who did attend have undoubtedly already secured your copies).

Photo: An excited audience at the Editors’ Prize Reading (4/12/2008).

Visit our MySpace page to see more photos from this and other Missouri Review events.

Seth read from a new piece he’s working on concerning a group of brewers addressing a public health crisis. A good time was had by all!