NOVEMBER, 2016—BULLETIN #118
Upcoming deadline: |
|
Our annual Family Matters contest: Increased 1st place prize is $2,500 and publication. Deadline 1/2/17. (Note: The grace period for the New Writer contest ends 11/10.) |
Our father and his sister, newly arrived in Sheepshead Bay from Hamburg, 1927. |
We welcome stories about families of all configurations! |
|
The 1st-place winner will be published in Glimmer Train and will receive 10 copies of that issue. Second- and 3rd-place winners win $500/$300, respectively, or, if accepted for publication, $700. Winners and finalists will be announced in the March bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week. |
|
Most submissions run 1,000-5,000 words, but stories as long as 12,000 words are fine. (Previous online publication is okay.) Writing Guidelines |
|
I think if you are going to impart some kind of wisdom or truth, and have it resonate with the reader, it has to be very, very specific. When I'm teaching memoir, one of the things people worry a lot about is who is going to care about my story? Ironically, the advice given by a lot of people is that you have to make it universal. But the advice I would give is the exact opposite of that. Make it really, really specific, because that specificity is what makes your story universal. If you try too hard to sound smart and profound, it's just going to be porridge.—Joan Wickersham, interviewed by Amy Yelin |
Essays in this bulletin: |
|
Mark Fishman: A breeze blows other words from the same book through the window, words settling in front of me upright like lead soldiers (more) |
|
Zehra Nabi: It's a question I ask myself even though I think I know the answer: different works have different ambitions and, therefore, require different approaches. There are stories that come easily, and there are stories that need time. (more) |
|
John S. Walker: One of the most profound of our epics in Western literature reduces itself to a very elemental story: A man named Odysseus, after twenty years at war, just wants to get home. Nostos, the Greeks called it. Return. (more) |
|
Kurt Rheinheimer: If I am lucky enough to find the place and the little piece of emotion that gives me something close to a shiver, and if I can capture that pairing of place and feeling in a beginning paragraph, then the story (more) |
Results of the July/August Very Short Fiction Award Winners have been contacted, as have the Top 25 and Honorable Mentions.
|
Results of the July/August Fiction Open Winners have been contacted, as have the Top 25 and Honorable Mentions.
|
Our thanks to all of you for letting us read your work! |
||
Feel free to forward this bulletin to your writer friends. As you know, the bulletin is free and meant to inform and to promote writers. (We never share your info.) People can sign up for bulletins themselves here. Missed a bulletin? They're archived here. |
||
Best regards, |
||
Discovering, publishing, and paying emerging writers since 1990. |
||
One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train continues to actively champion emerging writers. The magazine is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, New Stories from the Midwest, the O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, New Stories from the Southwest, Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. |
||
|