doug fir fiction award

Judge: Brian Doyle
Winner: $1,000 and national publication in the Bear Deluxe Magazine, writer’s residency at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology in Otis, Oregon. (up to 10 weeks)
Finalists (1-3): Honorable mention in The Bear Deluxe Magazine
Deadline: September 4, 2012

Submission Guidelines

We welcome submissions of previously unpublished short stories up to 5,000 words, relating to a sense of place or the natural world, interpreted as broadly or narrowly as you wish. If you are not familiar The Bear Deluxe, a sample copy of issue #32 (in which the 2010 winner appears) is available through mail for $5 at the address below. Issue #29 (including the 2008 award winner and one finalist) and issue #26 (including the 2007 winner and two finalists) are available for $5 each as well. When requesting sample copies, indicate your preferred issues.
Simultaneous submissions are not permitted. Multiple submissions are allowed but must be mailed separately with separate entry fees. Upon acceptance, Orlo and The Bear Deluxe Magazine assume first-time publishing rights and Web-publishing rights for the period of one year following print publication.

 

About 2012's Judge

Brian Doyle, award-winning author, essayist, and editor of the University of Portland's Portland Magazine.

Portland is annually ranked among the ten best university magazines in America, and ranked first in 2002 among all American university magazines.

Brian Doyle’s essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, Commonweal, Georgia Review, and Harper’s, among other periodicals. His essays have also been reprinted in the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998 and 1999, in Best Spiritual Writing 1999, 2001, and 2002, and in the anthologies Thoughts of Home (1995), Family (1997), In Brief (1998), and Resurrecting Grace (2001). He also reviews books for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian, and Preservation magazine; is a columnist for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia; and is the recipient of The American Scholar’s Best Essay Award in 2000, for an essay on Plutarch.

 

About 2011's Judge

Rivka Galchen’s first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, received a significant amount of attention for a debut novel, including favorable reviews on the cover of The New York Times Book Review and by critic James Wood of The New Yorker. Wood wrote that the novel was best understood as “a contribution to the Hamsun-Bernhard tradition of tragicomic first-person unreliability.” The novel was named as a finalist for the Mercantile Library’s 2008 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and for the Canadian Writers’ Trust’s 2008 Fiction Prize. In 2008, the novel was named as a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Award, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes. She is a Contributing Editor at Harper’s Magazine and has written for several national magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times and The Believer. In 2010 Galchen was chosen by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 American writers under the age of 40. She was a 2006 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers. Galchen teaches writing at Columbia University.

 

About the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology Residency Program

The Sitka Center offers workshops, residencies and community events, while maintaining a facility appropriate to its needs in harmony with its inspirational coastal environment near Cascade Head and the Salmon River estuary. Along with the $1,000 cash prize, award organizers are partnering with the Sitka Center to offer a writer’s residency of up to 10 weeks to the winning author. Due to Sitka's residency program structure, you must be able to participate in the whole residency time period of 3 1/2 months. There are two residency periods per year: October to mid January and January to late May. Unfortunately, if you cannot participate in the entire residency time, you will need to forfeit this award. For more details on residency benefits and requirements, visit www.sitkacenter.org.

 

Deadline, Mailing Address, Online Submissions

Entries must be postmarked by September 4, 2011. Mail your entry to Doug Fir Fiction Award/Bear Deluxe Magazine, 810 SE Belmont, Studio 5, Portland, OR 97214. Online submissions and payments can be made at www.orlo.org/donate (please indicate "Doug Fir submission 2012" in the notes with your payment).

 

Entry Requirements

An entry fee of $15. Make check or money order in U.S. dollars, drawn on a U.S. bank, payable to Orlo/The Bear Deluxe Magazine. All entrants receive a copy of the issue in which the winner appears. All entry fees are nonrefundable. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for notification of contest results.

 

Manuscript Format Guidelines

Manuscripts must be typed and double-spaced on 8 ½ x 11 paper. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please submit two title pages: one with the story title, author’s name, address, telephone number and email address; and one with just the story title.

 

Terms

- Your submitted story must be an original work of which you are the sole author.

- Submitted stories must be unpublished in both print and Web formats.

- Your story must be submitted in accordance with the eligibility requirements, format guidelines, entry requirements, deadline, and terms, or it will be disqualified.

- This competition is open to all writers in English, regardless of nationality.

- The Bear Deluxe Magazine reserves the right to edit the winning story for length and clarity upon consultation with the author.

- entry fees or manuscripts will be returned.

- Participating writers will receive an email notification upon receipt of their submission. If access to email is not possible, include an additional SASE for notification.

- Participating writers will be notified no later than January 30, 2013, of the award results.

- Writers currently involved with Orlo or The Bear Deluxe Magazine are not eligible for the award. To avoid a conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest, friends and current or former students of the award judge are not eligible for the award.

- The competition is void where prohibited or restricted by law.

- No phone calls or emails please.

- The decision of the judge is final.