Prairie Schooner

2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series

• Recent Winners
• Past Winners
• Guidelines
• Contest Code of Ethics
• Manuscript Selection Process

Recent Winners

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction for 2009 goes to Ted Gilley for his manuscript, Bliss. He will receive a $3,000 prize and publication by the University of Nebraska Press. His poems and short stories have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, the National Review, New England Review, Free Verse, and many other magazines and anthologies. Awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts/Vermont Arts Council and the McCullough Library in 2007, Gilley won the Alehouse Press (San Francisco) national poetry competition in 2008. He lives in Bennington, Vermont. Gilley is a native of southwestern Virginia but has lived in New England for thirty years.

The runner up this year is Garth Risk Hallberg for his manuscript The Descent of Man: Stories. He will receive a $1,000 prize. Hallberg is the author of A Field Guide to the North American Family, a novella. Other writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, Slate, and the anthology Best New American Voices 2008. His fiction has earned Pushcart Prize and Believer Book Award nominations and fellowships from New York University's MFA program and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

The winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry for 2009 is Shane Book for his manuscript, Fourth World. He will receive a $3,000 prize and publication by the University of Nebraska Press. Currently living in San Francisco, Book has published poetry in journals in the US, UK, and Canada and in many anthologies, most recently Gathering Ground (U of Michigan P). He was educated at the University of Western Ontario, the University of Victoria, New York University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. The recipient of scholarships to Cave Canem, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Breadloaf, his awards include a New York Times Fellowship in Poetry, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a National Magazine Award.

The runner up for poetry is Nicole Cooley for her manuscript, Milk Dress. She will receive a $1,000 prize. Cooley grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, and her new book of poems, Breach, about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, will be published by Louisiana State University Press in March 2010. Her first book of poetry, Resurrection, won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award and was published by LSU Press in 1996. Her second book of poetry, The Afflicted Girls, about the Salem witch trials of 1692, came out with LSU Press in April 2004 and was chosen as one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. She also published a novel Judy Garland, Ginger Love, with Regan Books/Harper Collins. She has received a Discovery/The Nation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems have appeared in the Nation, Poetry, Missouri Review, Pleaides, and Mississippi Review, among other magazines. She is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Queens College—City University of New York where she directs the new MFA program in creative writing and literary translation.

Guidelines

Eligibility

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series welcomes manuscripts from all living writers, including non-US citizens, writing in English. Both unpublished and published writers are welcome to submit manuscripts. Writers may enter both contests. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but we ask that you notify us immediately if your manuscript is accepted for publication somewhere else. No past or present paid employee of Prairie Schooner or the University of Nebraska Press or current faculty or student at the University of Nebraska will be eligible for the prizes.

Manuscript

We prefer that fiction manuscripts be at least 150 pages long and poetry manuscripts at least 50 pages long. Stories and poems previously published in periodicals are eligible for inclusion. Novels are not considered; one novella along with stories will be considered (please don't send single novellas or a collection of novellas).

Xeroxed copies are acceptable. Please do not bind manuscripts with anything other than a binder clip or rubber band. The author's name should not appear on the manuscript. All entries will be read anonymously.

Please send two cover pages: one listing only the title of the manuscript, and the other listing the author's name, address, telephone number, and email address.

An acknowledgements page listing the publication histories of individual stories or poems may be included, if desired.

No application forms are necessary.

Entry Fee

A $25 processing fee must accompany each submission, payable to Prairie Schooner.

Prizes

Winners will receive $3000 and publication through the University of Nebraska Press.

Notification

Please include a self-addressed postage-paid postcard for confirmation of manuscript receipt. Please use a standard postcard -- small index cards will not be accepted by the post-office.

A stamped, self-addressed business size envelope must accompany the submission for notification of results.

No manuscripts will be returned. All non-winning manuscripts will be recycled.

Winners will be announced on this website on or before July 15th, 2010. Results will be mailed shortly thereafter.

Address and Deadlines

Manuscripts should be mailed with a postmark between January 15th and March 15th, 2010 to:

Prairie Schooner Prize Series
Attn: Fiction or Poetry
201 Andrews Hall
PO Box 880334
Lincoln NE 68588-0334

Any questions, please send an email to jengelhardt2@unl.edu

For information on submitting to the magazine, please see our submission guidelines.

Contest Code of Ethics

Prairie Schooner, as a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, subscribes to this code of ethics for our annual Book Series Competition:

CLMP's community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines -- defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series Manuscript Selection Process

We employ a Book Series Coordinator who works for the contest only in an administrative capacity. Her office is far removed from the Series Editor´s office and from the magazine´s editorial offices. She receives all manuscripts, opens and removes identifying information, and assigns each a number. Her data base is confined to a dedicated computer in her locked office. All manuscripts are read anonymously.

We employ a group of experienced, paid screeners that changes from year to year. The Coordinator assigns anonymous, numbered manuscripts to each screener, who receives instruction in ethical selection procedures. No current or former paid employee of Prairie Schooner or the University of Nebraska Press, nor any member of the faculty, nor any student at the University of Nebraska is eligible for the contests. Screeners must return any manuscripts familiar or recognizable to them; such manuscripts will be reassigned to a different screener.

Each screener reads all manuscripts assigned and selects 3 top choices from his/her group of approximately 50. The screener provides evaluative paragraphs about his or her top three choices. The Coordinator receives the returned manuscripts from each screener and forwards the screeners´ top choices to a senior reader.

The top three selections from each screener are given by the Coordinator to one of two senior readers. These senior readers choose up to ten finalists from among the screeners' choices. These manuscripts are sent to members of our national literary board—two are selected each year, in each genre—for further readings. Their ranked responses are sent directly to Hilda Raz, the Senior Editor of the Prairie Schooner Book Series, who makes the final selections in both poetry and short fiction, taking into consideration the comments of the literary board, senior readers, and screeners.

Throughout the screening process and until the winners are selected, only the Book Series Coordinator, who may not serve as a screener, knows the identity of the writers.

Contact Information

Any questions, please contact James Engelhardt at jengelhardt2@unl.edu

Glimmer Train welcomes the work of established and upcoming writers. We especially appreciate stories that are both well written and emotionally engaging. Please let us read yours! If it is chosen for publication in Glimmer Train Stories, you will be paid upon acceptance. Your story will be prepared with care, and presented in a handsome, highly regarded literary journal to readers all over the world. If you've seen Glimmer Train Stories, you know that we go to some lengths to honor our contributors and their writing. Every category will be open for one full calendar month, from the first day through midnight of the last day. (Exception: The December Fiction Open closes on January 2nd each year.) Click on category link for complete guidelines: March: Fiction Open (2,000 to 20,000 wds) April: Family Matters and Standard May: Short Story Award for New Writers June: Fiction Open (2,000 to 20,000 wds)Best Start (up to 1,000 wds) --> July: Very Short Fiction Award (Up to 3,000 words) and Standard August: Short Story Award for New Writers September: Fiction Open (2,000 to 20,000 wds) October: Family Matters and Standard November: Short Story Award for New Writers December: Fiction Open (2,000 to 20,000 wds)   Please note: There are no minimum word counts for any category besides the Fiction Open. As always: Submissions must be original, unpublished fiction. (Online publication does not disqualify a piece.)  •  Please, no novels, poetry, or stories written for children.  •  Submissions should be made via our site, but in a pinch you can make paper submissions.  •  Please doublespace, use 12 point font, to save our eyes. Name, contact info, and page count are all optional.  •  When we accept a story for publication, we are purchasing first-publication rights. (Once we've published your story, you are free to, for instance, include it in your own collection.)  •  Competition submissions are also automatically considered for standard publication.  •  It's fine to submit a previously submitted story (revised or not) to any category for which it qualifies.  •  We're happy to consider stories whether they're submitted as competition entries or standard submissions, for which there are no reading fees. Standard or competition? How to decide  •  Simultaneous submissions are fine; we ask that you email us immediately please should a submitted piece be accepted elsewhere.  •  All response times have been shortened so your stories won't be tied up for more than two months after the close of any category. Competition winners are posted here and are announced in our monthly bulletins.  •  Please put glimmertrainpress.com and mail.glimmertrainpress.com on your safe-senders list so we can reach you, and keep us advised of email address changes by clicking on Contact Preferences once you're logged in at the site. (We never share your contact info.)

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The Mother Figure of Morne Lazarre

Rea Dol leads an effort to feed and care for the people of Morne Lazarre, a poor neighborhood in Port-au-Prince.

Africa at the Oscars

March 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

5 Minute TV feature on 'Music By Prudence'

Apart from Charlize Theron and her dress, the very big continent of Africa was indirectly represented at the Academy Awards last night when the short film, “Music by Prudence” won for best documentary short. As you know by now, the whole thing has been dominated by one of the former producers (who throws around Ndebele phrases) who pulled a Kanye West on the film’s director, Roger Ross Williams, as he accepted the award.  It turns they’ve been involved in an ugly spat over the direction of the film.

But what’s the film about?

 

via africasacountry.com

===================================

Elinor Burkett Provides Oscar Night's 'Kanye' Moment

from >http://www.popeater.com/2010/03/08/music-by-prudence-elinor-burkett-oscars/?i...

131 Comments

By Marc Schneider  Posted Mar 8th 2010 09:09AM

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Maybe it went semi-unnoticed because they were accepting one of the night's lower-profile awards, but the personal tiff between 'Music by Prudence' producer Elinor Burkett and director-producer Roger Ross Williams spilled over on stage at Sunday's Oscars, causing one of the night's weirder moments.

In what is being dubbed the "Kanye" moment of the night, Burkett rushed the stage while Williams was doing his thank-yous and verbally nudged him aside so she could speak. The problem is that she was not supposed to accept the award, and because of personal animosity between the two filmmakers, she said Williams rushed to the stage while his cane-wielding mother blocked Burkett from exiting the aisle.

In an interview with Salon, Burkett said she was shut out of Oscar-related events and because the two aren't speaking to each other (related to a lawsuit over the film), they did not discuss who would be allowed to speak if they won.

So, when their names WERE called, "he raced up there to accept the award. And his mother took her cane and blocked me. So I couldn't get up there very fast." WATCH:

The film is a story of a Zimbabwean singer-songwriter who was born severely disabled, but Burkett tells Salon it was supposed to be about a whole band, and not just Prudence. "The movie was my idea," she says. "I live in Zimbabwe. Roger had never even heard of Zimbabwe before I told him about this."

By Oscar night, her frustration had boiled over. "You know, I felt my role in this [film] has been denigrated again and again, and it wasn't going to happen this time."

Williams, also speaking to Salon, argued that Burkett disowned the film because of the creative differences, but that she was still eligible for an award. He says the academy decided he would be the one to speak if they won.

"She just ambushed me," he said of the moment she emerged on stage. "I was sort of in shock."

So, did his mom really try to speech-block Burkett with her cane? "My mother got up to hug me," he says. "And my mother is 87 years old. She was excited."

Williams can't help but agree this situation was similar to Kanye West's interruption of Taylor Swift at last year's MTV VMAs

"She did! She pulled a Kanye. And it's a shame, because this is such positive, happy film."

 

 

Men May Have It Bad, But Unemployment Statistics Obscure the Hit Taken By Single Moms

By J. Goodrich, AlterNet
Posted on March 4, 2010, Printed on March 8, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145918/

Much has been made of the fact that, when examined through the prism of gender, the Great Recession appears to have affected the employment of men far more than that of women. And, taken as a whole, that's true. According to figures released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for men (age 20 and over) stands at 10 percent, while 7.9 percent of women rank among the unemployed. (When the recession began in December 2007, the unemployment rate among men and women was the same: 4.4 percent.)

But spend some time rummaging among the unemployment statistics, and you'll find a significant group of women struggling mightily against a brutal economic tide: single women with children. They, the breadwinners of their families, are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than married women who have a spouse present. While this has been true for the last ten years (PDF), its effects are amplified in the current economic crisis.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a report released on Friday, showed the unemployment rate for married women at 6.1 percent, while that of single women "who maintain families," in the parlance of the BLS, reached a whopping 11.6 percent -- 68 percent higher than when the recession began. Add to that the fact that women, as a whole, earn only 77 cents for every dollar a man brings home, and you find many single women whose situation has gone from difficult to dire.

Indeed, married members of both sexes did better maintaining employment over the course of 2009, according to the BLS's own annual averages of its Household Data monthly surveys: 12 percent of people who had never married were unemployed by the end of the year; those who were widowed, separated or divorced suffered an unemployment rate of 9.2 percent, while married people (defined as having a spouse "present"), coasted by with a 5.5 percent rate of unemployment.

The effect on the nation's children has yet to be fully understood: 20 percent of all children today grow up in families headed by a single mother.

What is going on here? Are employers picking unmarried mothers over married workers when deciding on who is to be let go, just because they dislike unmarried mothers? Perhaps. But a more probable explanation is found elsewhere: The married and the unmarried differ from each other in ways which directly correlate with unemployment. As Liz Weiss and Heather Boussey write in their November 2009 article:

The differences in unemployment between married and unmarried women may in part reflect other demographics that come into play in unemployment rates, in that women (and men) who are unmarried tend to be younger, have less education, and are more racially and ethnically diverse than married women (and men)."

To see what all this means, it helps to turn statistics into concrete examples. Instead of wading through the BLS tables as percentages, imagine yourself as the drill-sergeant giving orders to a lineup of 100 individuals of a particular type. You call the unemployed to take a step forward. What happens if the hundred people in front of you are a general representative sample of the civilian U.S. labor force? Roughly ten will step forward, which corresponds to the 9.7 percent unemployment figure given for February 2010.

But what if all 100 standing before you are young people, between the ages of 20 and 24? Your call for the unemployed to step forward will result in 16 "volunteers" (to match the unemployment rate of 16.0 percent for that group). Even if all those younger privates were female, the step-forward call would result in more than 10 responses (to match the female unemployment rate of 13.1 percent for that age group).

Now let's look at education and unemployment. Let's make two groups of 100 privates each. The first group consists of those with less than a high school diploma, the second of those with at least a bachelor's degree. Now yell for the unemployed in both groups to step forward, hut, hut. What's the result? Sixteen from the first group step forward (15.6 percent), and five from the second group (5.0 percent).

The point of this silly exercise is to remind us that not all groups in the labor force suffer the same danger of unemployment. It also brings home the reason why the highly educated might not observe the great misery unemployment causes: Unemployment is concentrated among the less educated workers, and those workers mostly live in their own barracks, so to say. At present, the unemployment rate among people with college degrees is a mere 5.0 percent, compared with 15.6 percent for those who did not graduate high school. Some 10 percent of. people who have a high school diploma, but no education beyond that, find themselves unemployed.

Unemployment is also higher among major groups of people of color; this is the case even during good economic times. In February, 15.8 percent of African Americans, 12.4 percent of Latinos, 8.8 percent of whites and 8.4 percent of Asians were unemployed in the sense of the most common official definition. While men have a higher unemployment rate than women (10.0 percent vs. 8.0 percent) -- the traditionally male industries construction and manufacturing have been hit especially hard -- the rates for African American women and Latinas (12.1 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively) are still higher than the rate for white men (9.0 percent).

All these examples are simple snapshots of some groups which suffer from greater-than-average rates of unemployment. Unmarried women with children are more likely to be found in all those group pictures than married women because they are younger, less educated and more racially and ethnically diverse. Even if they faced no additional workplace discrimination aimed at their marital/maternal status, these factors place them at a higher risk of joblessness than other women.

That higher risk affects not only the single mothers themselves, but many of America's children. Having two adults capable of earning wages -- or at least of looking for jobs -- makes a big difference for the financial well-being of a family. Families headed by a single parent don't have that private safety-net. (This is true not only for families headed by an unmarried mother, but also for those headed by an unmarried father. Unfortunately, the BLS statistics don't provide information of the latter group.) With one-fifth of all children growing up in families headed by a single mother, and an estimated additional 5 percent in families headed by a single father, one in four of America's children are therefore affected by what happens to single-parent families.

In families such as this, the loss of a parent's job often sets off a cascade of disaster. When the sole breadwinner of a family loses her or his job, the family may also lose health insurance and housing. Poverty rates among all families headed by unmarried mothers (including those not in the labor force) are high. One in three (PDF) of these families lives in poverty. In 2008 (PDF), 43.5 percent of children in single mother families were counted as poor, compared to 9.9 percent of children living in married-couple families. The poverty rates were especially high for families headed by an African-American woman or by a Latina.

Poor families are poor. This means that they don't have savings to tide them over a prolonged bout of unemployment. If a poor single mother with children loses her job, what are her alternatives? She could always go on welfare, right?

Well, the Temporary Aid For Needy Families, the replacement of that old-and-much-maligned Aid for Families With Dependent Children, offers an average monthly payment of $372 (PDF), and even that only if the recipient hasn't exhausted the five-years lifetime cap. But, you say, she might indeed qualify for something better: unemployment insurance.

This was not always the case, because of the work requirements used in determining who was qualified to receive benefits. These tend to discriminate against workers with volatile earnings patterns -- something single mothers are more likely to have, given their need to combine care-giving with paid work and the general inflexibility of many low-paying jobs. But Obama's first stimulus package includes an alternative method of calculating the work requirements, one which lets many more poor single mothers qualify for unemployment benefits in the case of job loss. Those benefits might not be high but they sure beat $372 a month.

Even when times are good, unmarried women with children have higher unemployment rates. Times are certainly not good now, and we should not grow complacent about a general unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent. Far greater suffering than is suggested by that figure hides behind it. As Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, notes, "We have very little support for unemployed workers on purpose, because we want people to work. But if you are out of work for several years to come because you can't get a job?...It's not the fault of the unemployed. People in general should be more upset than they are."

Indeed. And the measly jobs package just passed by the House will do little to change the situation. If we really want to provide relief in the here and now, and provide for the future of the next generation of workers, any subsequent stimulus package must provide more help for those whom unemployment has hit hardest -- especially single parents struggling to support children on their own. Such a move would put money into the pockets of those who are most likely to spend it to fuel economic recovery: the poor. It is also the right thing to do in a recession which doesn't appear to be lifting soon.

The funny thing about the current recession is how fast we have learned to regard news of a 9.7 percent general rate of unemployment, the figure released on Friday by BLS (PDF), as good news. Because it is a teeny-weeny less than the the peak rates of late last year we now hope that the worst of this recession is over. Yet the general unemployment numbers, even if either stable or slightly approved for some groups, hide longer-term suffering and structural problems that will be with us for some time to come.

J. Goodrich is an economist. Her writing has been published in The American Prospect, Ms. magazine and on various political Web sites. She blogs at Echidne of the Snakes.

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View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145918/