APRIL, 2019—BULLETIN #147

We are at the midpoint of our two final contests: Short Story Award for New Writers and Family Matters. We are eager to read your stories!

Our mother's mother,
Blanche Davies Howland
(April 25, 1899-January 11, 1995) more

Deadline: April 30

NEW WRITER

1st place | $2,500

2nd place | $500*

3rd place | $300*

400-12,000 words

$18 reading fee

Guidelines

FAMILY MATTERS

1st place | $2,500

2nd place | $500*

3rd place | $300*

400-12,000 words

$18 reading fee

Guidelines

*Or, if accepted for publication, $700.
All stories accepted for publication will appear in our final issue this fall. (Every story is read and considered for publication.)

Winners and finalists will be announced in the July 1 bulletin, and contacted directly the previous week.

On point of view and writing family stories (video):
Most emerging writers can grasp the basics of point-of-view with relative ease and swiftness, and once they learn the basics, they rarely violate them. The question, though, isn't simply who's telling or seeing the story, but rather how are the events and details being seen, told, described or ignored or reconciled? What do a narrator's choices betray about the narrator's head and heart, history and preoccupations, fears and desires? The trick to inhabiting a POV character's consciousness more persuasively is to understand the character's obsession. What can the character not not see?—Bret Anthony Johnston (more)

Essays in this bulletin:

David McDannald: The journal entry, with its disparate impressions of West Africa and my family in Texas, seemed to have tapped what we might call the native-language instinct, the force in the brain that works almost without conscious effort, as one speaks… (more)

Erika Krouse: I had read books all my life, but had never really thought about the mechanics of story—each component's particularities, characteristics, functions, and personalities. Exposition, inciting incident, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action, resolution… (more)

Ken Cook: Focus on a central theme in your fictional family's life. From where does this theme derive? How has this theme worked through the generations, positively and/or negatively? In what ways has it helped create a sense of loyalty and identity? (more)

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.