From Our Soundbooth | March 24, 2022

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever that is, for episode 52, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Back Roads,” by Summer Hammond.

Summer Hammond has traversed every state in the continental USA in a fuchsia 18-wheeler. This is her go-to ‘fun fact.’ Also that she and her husband, Aly, earned their bachelor’s degrees online while long haul trucking. Summer went on to teach 9th grade Reading in Austin, TX. Her most recent back road adventure was: moving cross country with Aly and achieving her MFA in Fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington – at the tender age of 40. Her fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Haunted Waters Press, Broad River Review, and the Texas Review. She is a 2021 Rash Awards in Fiction finalist.

Artist Notes:
This piece first appeared as “Back Roads” in Sunspot Literary Journal, Volume 3, Issue #1, 2021.

Follow Summer Hammonds on social media at the following handles:
Twitter: @SummerDHammond
Instagram: summerdhammond

Episode 53 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize.

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates.

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Explore here.