Montana native Shann Ray reads from his book American Masculine at Billings YMCA Writers Voice

Not in Wyoming but just a few miles north of the border in Billings:

THE YMCA WRITER’S VOICE presents 2010 BAKELESS PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER SHANN RAY reading from AMERICAN MASCULINE, 7 p.m., Thursday, July 14, third floor Parmly Billings Library, 510 N. Broadway, Billings, Mont.

American Masculine, is a muscular debut story collection that reconfigures the myths of the American West; a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind. “Ray’s collection has an unsettling power as his roughened characters incrementally come to terms with their humanity, fallibility, and their realized capacity for atonement. This is a highly accomplished and intensely lyrical debut.” – Publishers Weekly

Shann Ray Ferch holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Alberta. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Story Quarterly, and other publications. He grew up in Montana, spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation and was a part of two state championship high school basketball teams at Park High in Livingston, coached by his dad, Tom Ferch. He played college basketball with his brother Kral at Montana State University, then played at Pepperdine University and professionally in Germany.

Call for entries: Wyoming Writers, Inc., writing contest

Wyoming Writers, Inc., announces contest guidelines:

Hard copy entries much be postmarked by April 9, 2011.

Entry fee:  $10.00 for each entry from members of Wyoming Writers, Inc., $15.00 for non-members,

Member fee for poetry is $10.00 for 3 poems, non-members $15.00 for 3 poems. We encourage non-members to join the organization. Information and membership form are available on www.wyowriters.org. Contest entry forms are also available on the web site, and from flyers in libraries and bookstores, and in the WyoWriters newsletter.  You may photocopy an entry form.

No limit on the number of entries, but there is an entry fee for each manuscript and every 3 poems. Include one check for the total amount. No entry fees will be refunded. 

Eligibility: The contest is open to all writers. All works must be the unpublished and the original work of the   submitter. All works must be in English. Work accepted or under consideration for publication elsewhere, or entered in another contest simultaneously is not eligible. Work that has previously placed or received an honorable mention in a Wyoming Writers, Inc. contest is not eligible. Work may be submitted to other contests or for publication after the contest deadline.

Categories

Adult Fiction: (No horror or erotica) 3000 words maximum

Fiction for Children/Juveniles:  3000 words maximum

Non-fiction:  Personal experiences and Memoirs3000 words maximum

Non-fiction:  Articles and Essays., 3000 words maximum

Traditional Poetry:  28 lines maximum; up to 3 poems per submission.

Free Verse Poetry:  28 lines maximum;  up to 3 poems per submission

Prizes:   First place: $50, Second place: $30,  Third place $20. Each will get a certificate. There will be no Honorable Mentions.  Winners will be notified the latter part of May. Winners will be announced at the WWInc 2011 Conference to be held at the Ramada Plaza Riverside,Casper, WY June 3-5, 2011.

Call for entries: Ohio State University Press

This listing from Poets & Writers (via The Bloomsbury Review):
Deadline: January 31, 2011

Entry Fee: $20

Web site: www.ohiostatepress.org

A prize of $1,500 and publication by Ohio State University Press is given annually for a collection of short fiction. Submit a manuscript of 150 to 300 pages of short stories, novellas, or a combination of the two with a $20 entry fee during the month of January. Send an SASE or visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Ohio State University Press, Prize in Short Fiction, 180 Pressey Hall, 1070 Carmack Road, Columbus, OH 43210-1002.

Call for entries: Warren Adler Short Story Contest

Warren Adler
Short Story Contest
Deadline: January 15, 2011
Entry Fee: $15
Web site: www.warrenadler.com/writing-contest.shtml


A prize of $1,000 and publication on the Warren Adler Web site is given annually for a short story. Warren Adler will judge. Submit a story of up to 2,500 words with a $15 entry fee by January 15. Visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Call for entries: Crazyhorse

The Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize

Winners receive $2,000 each and publication in Crazyhorse.

The deadline to enter this year's prizes: January 15, 2011.

Enter by uploading a file of your manuscript online or by mailing in a paper manuscript. Each manuscript entered should consist of up to twenty-five pages of fiction or up to three poems (up to 10 pages total of poetry). For each manuscript entered, include a reading fee of $16 per manuscript, which includes a one-year/two-issue subscription to Crazyhorse. More than one manuscript may be entered. For each additional fiction or poetry manuscript entered and entry fee paid, your subscription to Crazyhorse will extend by one year/two issues. Subscriptions begin with Crazyhorse Number 79, Spring 2011; the winning manuscripts will be published in Crazyhorse Number 80, Fall 2011.

To enter, go to http://www.crazyhorsejournal.org/page.php?id=108

Reviewers praise new collection of stories by UW prof Brad Watson

From a University of Wyoming press release:

Southern literature in the tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty is alive and well and living in -- of all places -- Wyoming.

Come again? Wyoming?

Reviewers are praising the southern literature heritage found in "Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives," the recent collection of stories written by University of Wyoming English Professor Brad Watson.

The book's popularity comes as no surprise to Watson's readers, who got a taste of his unique southern perspective in Watson's previous works, "Last Days of the Dog-Men," and "Heaven of Mercury," for which he was nominated for the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction.

Writing in Esquire, Daniel Torday notes, "Brad Watson's third book is a clear reminder that Southern literature will always rise again."

Torday continues, "Watson's South is modernized, but it breathes the same gothic, aesthetically precise breaths as the finest Southern writing. The ability of a writer like Watson to emigrate from his South and migrate his Southern sensibility into his writing keeps Southern literature breathing. It's not lost on a reader that Watson himself lives and teaches in Wyoming today, not Alabama or Mississippi."

Boston Globe book reviewer John Freeman ranks Watson's work among the year's best fiction books.

"They (the stories) plainly depict the importance of resilience in a world determined to undermine it," he writes. "Brad Watson's characters foul up their lives, as fathers, as sons, but they keep on."

But Freeman thinks too much is made of Watson writing about the South.

"The setting is the American South, but ... like Welty and O'Connor before him, he simply writes -- and that's why he gets it right."

Originally from Mississippi, Watson teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at UW. He previously taught at The University of Alabama, Harvard University, The University of California-Irvine and The University of Mississippi, and has held fellowships through the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation.

For more information and links to additional reviews, visit http://www.bradwatsonfiction.blogspot.com/ 

Photo: Author Brad Watson plays with his dog Maji at a ranch near Laramie. (Katie Watson Photo)

C.J. Box's "geezer noir" story in new anthology

News from Cheyenne writer C.J. Box:

A new short story by C.J. Box will be published in December 2010.

"Damn Near Dead 2: Live Noir or Die Trying"

Edited by Bill Crider.

Introduction by Charlaine Harris.

Trade paperback original / $18 (Canada $21.95) December 2010 / 978-1-935415-21-3)

Features original "geezer noir" stories by Ace Atkins, C. J. Box, Christa Faust, Ed Gorman, Carolyn Haines, Joe R. Lansdale, Denise Mina, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, Cornelia Read, Kat Richardson, S. J Rozan, Don Winslow, and more!

C.J. Box's contribution is called "The End of Jim and Ezra."

FMI: http://www.cjbox.net/

"Working Words" anthology features Cheyenne story

Michael Shay, Wyoming Arts Council staffer and one of your trusty wyomingarts bloggers, has one of his stories in the new anthology "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams," fresh from Coffee House Press in Minneapolis. Editor is Detroit's M.L. Liebler, who's been to Wyoming several times (and may travel this way again -- stay tuned). Check out the book at http://www.coffeehousepress.org/working-words.asp

The story, "The Problem with Mrs. P," was in Mike's first collection, "The Weight of a Body," published by Ghost Road Press in Denver. The story is set in Cheyenne.

Call for entries: NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction"

Enter your story (600 words or less) to NPR's "Three Minute Fiction" contest.

Each round, our judges throw out a challenge. This time, your story must begin with the line, "Some people swore that the house was haunted." It must end with, "Nothing was ever the same again after that."

Author Michael Cunningham is the judge (and he also came up with the opening and closing lines.

FMI: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129752769

Meet the Equality State Book Festival presenters: Jaimee Wriston Colbert

Jaimee Wriston Colbert is one of the presenters for the Equality State Book Festival Sept. 24-25 in Casper.

Here's some info about Jaimee:

Jaimee Wriston Colbert is the author of a new novel, Shark Girls, nominated for the ALA Notable Books of 2010 List and a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards; a linked stories collection, Dream Lives of Butterflies, which won the gold medal in the 2008 Independent Publisher Awards; a novel in stories, Climbing the God Tree, winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Prize; and the story collection Sex, Salvation, and the Automobile, winner of the Zephyr Publishing Prize. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals, including TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Tampa Review, Connecticut Review and New Letters, broadcast on “Selected Shorts,” archived in “New Letters on the Air,” and anthologized. Two recent stories won the Jane’s Stories National Short Story Award, 2008, and the Isotope Editors’ Fiction Prize, 2009. Originally from Hawai’i, she is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at SUNY, Binghamton University.

Jaimee will wrap up the festival with “Stories that Bite Back: A Reading from Shark Girls” from 8-9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 25, in the Aley Fine Arts Center, Durham Hall, Casper College. The event is free and open to the public.

Shark Girls has been nominated for the ALA Notable Books of 2010 List and as a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards. The novel takes place in Hawai’i and follows the lives of two sisters, from Hawai’i to Maine, in the aftermath of a shark attack in Oahu. Books will be available for purchase and signing at this event.

For a full schedule of bookfest events, go to http://www.equalitystatebookfest.com/

Call for entries: Ruminate Magazine

From Ruminate Magazine in Fort Collins, Colo.:

We are now accepting entries for the 2011 Short Story Prize. We are proud to announce that our annual short story prize is now being sponsored by the William Van Dyke Charitable Fund and is being renamed The William Van Dyke Short Story Prize. The prize award has also been generously increased to 1,000.00. We are so grateful for this generous gift.

The entry deadline is October 15th, 2010.

FMI: http://www.ruminatemagazine.org/contests/short-story.html

Call for entries: Fish Short Story Prize

From the Fish Publishing web site:

The Fish Short Story Prize for 2010/2011 is open for entries. We are delighted to announce that Simon Mawer, author of "The Glass Room" (and seven other novels) will judge the prize.

Fish Publishing runs the short story competition each year, the winners of which are published in the annual Fish Anthology.

Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann and Dermot Healy, previously judges of the Fish Short Story Prize, are honorary patrons.

The Fish Short Story Prize welcomes stories on any theme written in English, with a maximum of 5,000 words. The Anthology will be launched during the West Cork Literary Festival, July 2011.

Fish have been running the short story contest since 1995. Publication in the anthology has been a stepping stone for many into successful writing careers.

One Story offers summer workshop

One Story magazine will be offering an intimate 6-day writers workshop to help emerging writers answer the question our editors get asked regularly: Should I get an Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree?

The workshop will be held in Brooklyn July 25-30.

The week will include morning workshops, afternoon craft lectures, and evening panels with writers and editors, agents, and MFA directors. All events are designed to give students the practical advice they need to either apply for an MFA or to launch their career outside of academia.

For complete details, click here.

"New West" reviews Alyson Hagy's new book

Jenny Shank reviewed Alyson Hagy’s new story collection, “Ghosts of Wyoming,” in New West.

She concluded the review this way:

With the stories in “Ghosts of Wyoming,” Alyson Hagy makes a convincing case that restless and unquiet spirits haunt her home state. Or maybe it’s just the wind.

Alyson teaches at UW and is the winner of a 2006 creative writing fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council. She will read from “Ghosts of Wyoming” at the Albany County Public Library in Laramie on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2 p.m. She also will participate in a reading of Graywolf Press authors at the AWP Conference in Denver in April.

Read the entire New West review at http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/things_that_go_bump_in_wyoming_alyson_hagys_ghosts_of_wyoming/C39/L39/

Reclusive author J.D. Salinger dies at 91

Reclusive writer J.D. Salinger died today. He was 91.

Salinger didn't publish much. But with him it was quality, not quantity. He wrote one of the best-selling novels of all time, "Catcher in the Rye," also one of the most-banned books in U.S. schools.

He also wrote one of the best American short story collections, "Nine Stories." As a young short story writer, I read each one of these over and over in an attempt to absorb their magic.

Here's what New York Times writer Charles McGrath had to say on the subject (images above also from NYT):

The stories were remarkable for their sharp social observation, their pitch-perfect dialogue (Mr. Salinger, who used italics almost as a form of musical notation, was a master not of literary speech but of speech as people actually spoke it), and for the way they demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story — the old structure of beginning, middle, end — in favor of an architecture of emotion, in which a story could turn on a tiny alteration of mood or irony. Mr. Updike said he admired “that open-ended Zen quality they have, the way they don’t snap shut.”

--Mike Shay

Essence -- 2010 VSA Arts "Call for Writing"

The VSA arts Call for Writing invites students, ages 11–18 years, to interpret their world through the use of creative writing in the form of short works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Writers may use their own experience for inspiration or base their writings on fictional events. Students submitting writing must have a disability or a connection to people with disabilities.
The selected pieces will become part of the VSA arts online writing journal, Infinite Difference.
All submissions must be submitted by Friday, November 20, 2009.
Entry guidelines and forms: http://www.vsarts.org/x889.xml

Nina McConigley to celebrate new story in American Short Fiction with Texas reading

Wyoming fiction writer Nina McConigley (upper right) is one of the writers featured in the new issue of American Short Fiction.

Casper's Nina Swamidoss McConigley (now teaching at UW in Laramie) has a new story out this fall in American Short Fiction magazine. The story is "Curating Your Life." A reading featuring contributors to this issue of ASF will be at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 18, at the Austin, Texas, home of Kelty Christman. This is free and open to the public.

The event features readings by writers Nina McConigley and Josh Weil. Actor Gabriel Luna, fresh from his title role in Cambiare Productions’ Orestes, will also read. Buzz Moran and LB Deyo of Dionysium will emcee. Music from the fall issue's diskette will also be played.

FMI: http://www.americanshortfiction.org/blog/?p=1236