Prizes | Judges | Guidelines | Past Winners
NEW In honor of the centennial of Abraham Sutzkever's birth, SLS Lithuania is proud to announce the Sutzkever Centennial Translation Prize, to be judged by Ed Hirsch.
NEW In memory of our dear friend, SLS is proud to announce the first annual Arkadii Dragomoshchenko Prize for Innovative Poetry judged by Charles Bernstein
Summer Literary Seminars is very excited to announce our 2013 unified (Lithuania and Kenya) literary contest! It will be held this year in affiliation with Fence Magazine and The Walrus. Joining us will be the dynamic online magazines Joyland, Branch, and DIAGRAM; We are also thrilled to continue our three new partnerships, with prizes sponsored by the Center for Fiction, St. Petersburg Review, and the esteemed Graywolf Press. Judging the contest are award-winning writers Mary Gaitskill (fiction), Eileen Myles (poetry), and Ander Monson (non fiction).
Thanks to our generous friends at Fence, this year the contest entry will include a one-year subscription to Fence Magazine! Read on, or enter today!
Contest winners in the categories of fiction and poetry will have their work published in print in Fence, and online in The Walrus. Additionally, they will have the choice of attending (airfare, tuition, and housing included) any one of the SLS-2013 programs – in Vilnius, Lithuania (summer 2013); or Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya (December).
Second-place winners will receive a full tuition waiver for the program of their choice, and publication in online magazine Joyland (fiction) or Branch (poetry). Third-place winners will receive a 50% tuition discount and publication in Joyland (fiction) or Branch (poetry).
The contest winner in the category of non fiction will be published in DIAGRAM, and will have the choice of attending (airfare, tuition, and housing included) any one of the SLS-2013 programs.
NEW The winner of the Arkadii Dragomoshchenko Prize for Innovative Poetry will have their entry published on prize judge Charles Bernstein’s commentary page at Jacket2, a widely read site for new poetics. In addition, the winner will receive free tuition and $1000 towards travel funds to attend the 2013 SLS-Lithuania/East-Central Europe program. Full details here.
NEW The winner of the Sutzkever Centennial Translation Prize will receive a full scholarship at SLS Lithuania, as well as a $500 travel stipend. The winning entry will be translated into Lithuanian and read at a celebration in Vilnius on the centennial, on July 15, 2013. Full details here.
The winner of The Center for Fiction Prize for excellence in short story writing will receive full tuition for any 2013 SLS Program, as well as $500 towards travel and publication in The Center for Fiction's online journal, The Literarian.
The winner of the Graywolf Prize for the best novel excerpt of an emerging writer (you must have published no more than two novels) will receive full tuition for any 2013 SLS Program, as well as $500 towards travel and publication on the Graywolf website.
The winners (one fiction, one poetry) of the SLS-St. Petersburg Review Editor's Choice Award will receive publication in the journal as well as free tuition to an upcoming program.
A number of select contest participants, based on the overall strength of their work, will be offered tuition scholarships, as well, applicable to the SLS-2013 programs.
Fiction Judge: Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and Veronica, which was nominated for the 2005 National Book Award, National Critic’s Circle Award, and L.A. Times Book Award. She is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner in 1998. Her newest collection of stories is titled Don’t Cry (2009). Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the feature film of the same name starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. The film received the Special Jury Prize, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Gaitskill’s stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2002 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. She has taught at U-C Berkeley, the University of Houston, New York University, Brown and Syracuse University. Mary Gaitskill was born in 1954 in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1981 Gaitskill graduated from the University of Michigan, where she won an award for her collection of short fiction The Woman Who Knew Judo and Other Stories.
Poetry Judge: Eileen Myles is a poet and writer based in New York City. She has published over twenty books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, plays, and libretti, including Inferno (a poet’s novel), Skies, Cool for You, School of Fish, and Not Me. The Importance of Being Iceland (2009) travel essays on art was awarded a Warhol/Creative Capital grant. She contributes to numerous journals including Art in America and Artforum, Parkett, and Bookforum, The Nation, and The Believer.
Non Fiction Judge: Ander Monson is the author of a number of paraphernalia including a website, a decoder wheel, several chapbooks, as well as five books, most recently Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf Press, 2010) and The Available World (Sarabande Books, 2010). He lives in Tucson where he teaches at the University of Arizona and edits the journal DIAGRAM <thediagram.com> and the New Michigan Press.
Arkadii Dragomoshenko Prize Judge: Charles Bernstein was born in Manhattan in 1950. He has published 27 collections of poetry including With Strings, Republics of Reality: Poems 1975-1984 and Controlling Interests. His essays are included in My Way: Speeches and Poems and Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984. Bernstein is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The complete guidelines for the 2013 contest are as follows:
•Deadline: February 28 2013
•All entries should be in a standard type face and 12pt font and, if emailed, attached in .pdf, .doc or .rtf format.
• For fiction: ONE short story or novel excerpt, maximum 25 (double-spaced) pages per entry.** NOTE: To qualify for the Graywolf Prize, you must have published no more than two novels (or none at all). Note in your subject line that you are submitting a novel excerpt.
•For non fiction: ONE piece of non fiction, maximum 15 pages. Essay may include multimedia such as sound, image, video, hyperlinking, etc.
•For poetry: No more than THREE poems per entry, up to 10 pages.
•Entrants may submit to any or all categories more than once; however, each entry must be accompanied by its own entry fee.
•Only previously unpublished work can be submitted.
•In your subject line, please include your name and type of submission (short story, novel excerpt, poetry) eg. Jane Smith - Poetry
•Include your complete contact information (address, telephone, email address) on the manuscript. Entries are not judged blind.
•All entrants will be notified of the winners in the spring by email.
•Cover letters are not required.
•Previous First-Place winners may not re-enter.Entries can be submitted electronically, to: sls.contest@gmail.com (NOTE: Please do not send payments to this address - we request that if you pay online you use the Paypal button below.)
A $17 US reading fee must accompany each entry. Multiple entries are permissible, as long as they are accompanied by separate reading fees. The entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Fence Magazine. Already a subscriber?—you can choose a one-year extension to your current subscription or you can choose to gift a friend.
Fees can paid paid online, via Paypal, or to the address below, by cheque.
NOTE: Online submissions and payments are preferred, but if you would rather submit the hard copy and pay by cheque, the address is below:
Summer Literary Seminars
Unified Literary Contest
English Department
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8 CanadaThese are the complete contest guidelines.
Do not hesitate to contact SLS with any questions, by e-mail: sls@sumlitsem.org, or ann@sumlitsem.org – or by telephone: (514) 848-2424x4632.
We wish each and every one of you the best of luck with the contest!