Announcing this year's genre contest judges: Andrew Sean Greer, Chris La Tray, and Heather Cahoon

CutBank is excited to announce our guest judges for this year’s genre contests for the Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the Montana Prize in Fiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry.

The Montana Prize in Fiction
Judged by Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of six works of fiction, including the bestsellers The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. Greer has taught at a number of universities, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, been a TODAY show pick, a New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellow, a judge for the National Book Award, and a winner of the California Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award. He is the recipient of a NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in San Francisco.

The Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction
Judged by Chris La Tray

Chris La Tray is a writer and a walker. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large (2018, Riverfeet Press) won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His next book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring 2021. Chris is Chippewa-Cree Métis, and is an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He lives near Missoula, MT.

The Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry
Judged by Heather Cahoon

Heather Cahoon, PhD, received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana where she was the Richard Hugo Memorial Scholar. She has been awarded a Merriam Frontier Prize, a Potlatch Fund Native Arts grant and a Montana Arts Council Artist Innovation Award. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Yellow Medicine Review, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Carve, and Cutthroat among others. Her first full length collection of poems entitled Horsefly Dress, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press in fall of 2020. Heather is also a federal Indian policy scholar and Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Montana. She grew up on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in the summer print issue of CutBank. All entries must be submitted electronically, and complete guidelines are available on our Submittable page. Remember: we're looking for work that showcases an authentic voice, an original perspective, and a willingness to push against the boundaries of form.

Deadlines close on February 1st, so get those manuscripts polished and in to us!

Winners of the 2018 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest

We are thrilled to announce the winners for the 2018 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest, judged by Andrew Martin. Thank you to everyone who submitted. The winning stories will be published in CutBank 90, due out soon. The 2019 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest is currently open for submissions.

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First-Place Prize:

"The Lizard That Lived Forever" by Sara Ryan

Judge Andrew Martin writes, “The language is striking, and there's a visceral rawness to it that got to me. I thought the voice was original and intense, and I liked how hardcore it was. It felt urgent."

Sara Ryan is the author of the chapbooks Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press) and Excellent Evidence of Human Activity (The Cupboard Pamphlet). Winner of the 2018 Grist Pro Forma Contest, her work has been published in Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Booth, and others. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Texas Tech University.

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Runners-up:

“Rapture” by Eliza Smith

"Concussion" by Ruth Joffre

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Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and Tin House’s Flash Fridays series. His nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Washington Post.

Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to Andrew Martin! Look for these stories in print in our forthcoming issue of CutBank 90.

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The 2019 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash contest is currently accepting submissions and will be judged by acclaimed author Melinda Moustakis. The deadline for submission is September 30, 2019. Click here for details on how to submit your work.

Announcing this year's genre contest guest judges: Cheryl Strayed, Joe Wilkins, and Alicia Mountain

CutBank is excited to announce our guest judges for this year’s genre contests for the Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the Montana Prize in Fiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry.

The Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction
Judged by Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, and the novel Torch. Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. Strayed's books have been translated into nearly forty languages around the world and have been adapted for both the screen and the stage. Strayed's essays have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, The Sun, Tin House, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere.

The Montana Prize in Fiction
Judged by Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins was born and raised north of the Bull Mountains, out on the Big Dry of eastern Montana. His debut novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, speaks to the community, struggle, violence, and care Joe knew growing up in the rural West, and his memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, captures the lives of boys and men in that desolate country, a place that shapes the people who live there and rarely lets them go. The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry won a 2014 GLCA New Writers Award—an honor that has previously recognized early work by luminaries such as Alice Munro, Richard Ford, and Louise Erdrich—and Wilkins’s work has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best American Magazine Writing, New Poets of the American West, and Best New Poets. 

The Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry
Judged by Alicia Mountain

Alicia Mountain’s debut collection, High Ground Coward (Iowa, 2018), was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy to win the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is also the author of the Thin Fire, selected by Natalie Diaz and published by BOAAT Press. She is a lesbian poet, PhD candidate, and assistant editor of the Denver Quarterly. Mountain earned her MFA at the University of Montana in Missoula.

One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in the summer print issue of CutBank. All entries must be submitted electronically, and complete guidelines are available on our Submittable page. Remember: we're looking for work that showcases an authentic voice, an original perspective, and a willingness to push against the boundaries of form.

Deadlines close in eight days, on February 1st, so get those manuscripts polished and in to us.

Andrew Martin to judge this year's Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest!

We're excited to announce that Andrew Martin will be the guest judge for our Big Sky, Small Prose: Flash Contest! His novel Early Work was just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and his stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and Tin House’s Flash Fridays series. His nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Washington Post.

Submissions are still open, so get your best short prose into us by September 30 for a chance to win the $500 first place prize and publication in CutBank 90. 

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Early Work

A Novel

by Andrew Martin

“Marvelous . . . Read [Early Work] on a beach for the refreshment of a classic boy-meets-girl plot, or turn the pages more slowly to soak in some truly salty koans and morally insolvent characters . . . It’s an accomplished and delightful book, but there’s no hashtag for that.”
―Molly Young, The New York Times

“[Andrew] Martin introduces characters in sharp, funny flash-portraits that declare the book’s intention to perch, vape in hand, on the border of earnestness and satire . . . Early Work is a gift for those readers who like being flirted with by thoughtful and interesting people, and who like observing such people as they flirt with each other.”
―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

“[The] story of a love triangle . . . Martin reinvigorates the form, transposing its chords and riffing on its most familiar melodies.” —Max Ross, The Paris Review

“Compulsively readable . . . [Early Work] asks big questions about ambition and success and art and love, but it's also a story of a love affair, delicious and horrible in equal measure.”
―Emily Temple, Literary Hub

“Stunning . . . whip-smart and rather disturbing . . . [Andrew] Martin has a remarkable ear for natural dialogue and pitch-perfect, witty banter . . .”
―Dana Hansen, Chicago Review of Books

“From a simple boy-meets-girl premise and from the most basic dramatic ingredients—ardor, art, alcohol, anxiety—Andrew Martin has concocted an exceptionally funny and disturbing first novel. I found myself thinking of Goodbye, Columbus and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh—from its title and its opening sentence on, Early Workachieves the feel of a classic debut.”
—Chris Bachelder, author of The Throwback Special

 “The people in Andrew Martin’s Early Work have it all—youth, intelligence, ready wit, readier irony, terminally knowing tastes in books and music, affordable rents, abundant abusable substances, prolific sexual lives, even endearing dogs—and it’s perversely exhilarating to watch them, despite their fits of good-heartedness, turn a bucolic bohemia into a hipster hellscape. This is one smart, funny, scary novel.”
—David Gates, author of Jernigan and The Wonders of the Invisible World

 “What a debut! Early Work is one of the wittiest, wisest (sometimes silliest, in the best sense), and bravest novels about wrestling with the early stages of life and love, of creative and destructive urges, I’ve read in a while. The angst of the young and reasonably comfortable isn’t always pretty, but Andrew Martin possesses the prose magic to make it hilarious, illuminating, moving.” —Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts and The Ask

“Beautifully executed and very funny, Early Work is a sharp-eyed, sharp-voiced debut that I didn’t want to put down.” —Julia Pierpont, author of Among the Ten Thousand Things and The Little Book of Feminist Saints

“To ignore Andrew Martin’s Early Work—a wry and pitch-perfect novel about late-twentysomething writers and lazy, progressive creatives in varying stages of existential crises—because of any painful familiarity is to do yourself a disservice.” —Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed

Andrew Martin’s stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and Tin House’s Flash Fridays series, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, and other publications. Early Work is his first novel.

Early Work, by Andrew Martin, was published in hardcover by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on July 10, 2018 (ISBN: 978-0-374-14612-2, $26.00). For more information, please contact Lauren Roberts(212-206-5325, lauren.roberts@fsgbooks.com).

Events

7/10 – Harvard Book Store – Cambridge, MA

7/11 – Labyrinth Books – Princeton, NJ

7/12 – McNally Jackson Books (Williamsburg) – Brooklyn, NY

7/14 – Politics and Prose Bookstore – Washington, DC

7/17 – New Dominion Bookshop – Charlottesville, VA

8/21 – Point Street Reading Series – Providence, RI

9/27–30 – Montana Book Festival – Missoula, MT

10/01 – Powell’s City of Books – Portland, OR

10/13 – Boston Book Festival – Boston, MA

10/14 – KGB Bar – New York, NY

Deadline Alert! CutBank contests and regular submissions closing soon!

Our Montana prizes in fiction and CNF, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry are closing the submissions window in 1 day and nine hours from now! Finish up with the red pen, finalize those entries and get them to us before it's too late!

Regular print submissions are winding up, too. Only 2 days and 9 big hours left.

Our submissions calendar is here, with links to all the info you need, and here's our Submittable portal when you're ready to rock.

Douglas Adams may be awesome, but even he might have said, "Hey. Don't be this guy."

CutBank is the proud sponsor of a variety of contests encouraging (and rewarding) fine writing in all genres, with opportunities including the Montana Prize in Fiction, the Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, the Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest, as well as our annual CutBank Chapbook Contest.

We're looking for work that showcases an authentic voice, an original perspective, and a willingness to push against the boundaries of form.

Meet this year's judges:

The Montana Prize in Fiction
Judged by Monica Drake

Meet Monica Drake: "I have an MFA from the University of Arizona and teach at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. My debut Novel, Clown Girl, is published by the amazing indie press, Hawthorne Books, and has won an Eric Hoffer Award as well as an IPPY. It’s been translated into Italian, and recently optioned for film by the brilliant Kristen Wiig (SNL, Bridesmaids). My most recent novel, The Stud Book, is now out (Hogarth Books, April 2013) and doing great." (From monicadrake.com)

The Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction
Judged by Sarah Gerard

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize, and two chapbooks, most recently BFF. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as anthologies. She’s been supported by fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Tin House, PlatteForum, Ucross, and Pocoapoco. She writes a monthly column for Hazlitt and teaches writing in New York City.

The Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry
Judged by Sarah Vap

Sarah Vap, our Fall 2017 Distinguished Hugo Writer, is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Viability (Penguin 2016), which was selected for the National Poetry Series. Her book of hybrid poetics, End of the Sentimental Journey, inaugurated the Infidel Poetics Series with Noemi Press (2013). She is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship for poetry and has taught at Arizona State University, University of Southern California, and Drew University.

Contest Deadlines Extended!

Deadlines extended!

The Montana Prizes in fiction and nonfiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize for poetry now open until JANUARY 31!

Visit our Submittable page for details, and give that entry another round of polish with the extra time.

Good luck--we're eager to read your work!

CutBank's Annual Chapbook Contest Opens Jan 1!

The submission window is open from Jan 1 to March 31. (And you know deadlines always come sooner than you think.)

Winner, 2016: little violences
by Raven Jackson
Purchase a copy here.

What's at stake if you drag your feet too long? Money, for one thing! Our winner receives $1000, high-quality publication of their book, and 25 contributor copies. Runners up enjoy publication and copies, as well, and every entry can look forward to a copy of CutBank 89 upon its release in spring/summer 2018.

You'll find solid info and full details on our Contests page, and while you're at it, visit our winners from last year right here.

In a nutshell:

Here's James D'Agostino, last year's winner with Weathermanic. Doesn't James look happy? You could be that happy, too!

• We're looking for 25-40 pages of original poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction by a single author. (Translations are not eligible for this award. Sorry.)
• Previously published stand-alone pieces or excerpts may be included in a manuscript, but the manuscript as a whole must be an unpublished work.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine!
• Manuscripts should be cohesive and coherent; in other words, your manuscript should resonate and make sense as a book.

Send us startling, compelling, and beautiful original work. We’re interested in both prose and poetry – and particularly work that straddles the lines between genres, in a fresh, powerful manuscript. Perhaps yours will overtake us quietly, gracefully defy genres, or satisfyingly subvert our expectations. Maybe it will punch us in the mouth page in and page out!

Now that 2017 is gasping for air, hang in there--2018 can be your year!

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for updates. We'll let you know when the gates are open or the deadline's approaching, so have your most amazing work ready!

Contest submissions now open!

CutBank is now taking submissions for the Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry. Take a look at our contest submission guidelines and send us your best work! In the meantime, check out this list of articles about the lives of the literati, culled from the New Yorker archives.

Or this blog post about the relationship between reality and fiction, from the New York Review of Books.

Finish up with this humorous take on how to write a sentence from the New Yorker.

CONTESTS OPEN SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1

2015 CutBank Contests

CutBank sponsors a variety of contests, including the Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, as well as our annual CutBank Chapbook Contest. Submission dates vary so please see details below. Please send only your best work. With all three of these awards, we’re looking for work that showcases an authentic voice, an original perspective, and a willingness to push against the boundaries of form. All entries must be submitted electronically.

Montana Prize in Fiction

Judged by Susan Steinberg

The Montana Prize in Fiction seeks to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. The winner, chosen by Susan Steinberg, will be featured in CutBank 83 and receive $500. All submissions will be considered for print publication. We look forward to reading your work!

Submissions are accepted November 1 through January 15. Submissions are accepted through our online submission manager only. The $20 contest entry fee includes a one-year subscription to CutBank and covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Please send only a single work of no greater than 35 pages. Please submit only once per genre, though writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres.

 Include a short cover letter that mentions your address (where your subscription will be sent), phone number, and email address, as well as the title of your work. Please include the author’s name on the manuscript—names will be removed from the pool of submissions that goes before our contest judges. Current subscribers must submit the same $20 fee, and their CutBank subscriptions will be extended by one year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission via Submittable immediately should it be accepted elsewhere. We are unable to offer refunds.

Entrants will be notified of their submission status no later than March 15, 2015. One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in CutBank 83, our summer 2015 issue. Winners will be required to complete a W-9 form to receive payment. All manuscripts are considered for publication in CutBank. All rights to selected manuscripts revert to the author upon publication. The author grants their permission to have their work electronically archived as part of CutBank 83 in EBSCO International’s subscription-based research database. Current University of Montana students and faculty and former CutBank staff are not eligible for the awards.

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction

Judged by Will Boast

The Montana Prize in Nonfiction seeks to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. The winner, chosen by Will Boast, will be featured in CutBank 83 and will receive $500. All submissions will be considered for print publication. We look forward to reading your work!

Submissions are accepted November 1 through January 15. Submissions are accepted through our online submission manager only. The $20 contest entry fee includes a one-year subscription to CutBank and covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Please send only a single work of no greater than 35 pages. Please submit only once per genre, though writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres.

 Include a short cover letter that mentions your address (where your subscription will be sent), phone number, and email address, as well as the title of your work. Please include the author’s name on the manuscript—names will be removed from the pool of submissions that goes before our contest judges. Current subscribers must submit the same $20 fee, and their CutBank subscriptions will be extended by one year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission via Submittable immediately should it be accepted elsewhere. We are unable to offer refunds.

Entrants will be notified of their submission status no later than March 15, 2015. One winner in each genre, as chosen by our guest judges, will receive a $500 award and publication in CutBank 83, our summer 2015 issue. Winners will be required to complete a W-9 form to receive payment. All manuscripts are considered for publication in CutBank. All rights to selected manuscripts revert to the author upon publication. The author grants their permission to have their work electronically archived as part of CutBank 83 in EBSCO International’s subscription-based research database. Current University of Montana students and faculty and former CutBank staff are not eligible for the awards.

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry

Judged by Matt Rasmussen

The Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry seeks to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. The winner, chosen by Matt Rasmussen, will be featured in CutBank 83 and receive $500. All submissions will be considered for print publication. We look forward to reading your work!

Submissions are accepted November 1 through January 15. Submissions are accepted through our online submission manager only. The $20 contest entry fee includes a one-year subscription to CutBank and covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Submit up to five poems. Please submit only once per genre, though writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres.

 Please include a short cover letter that mentions your address (where your subscription will be sent), phone number, and email address, as well as the title of your work. Please include the author’s name on the manuscript—names will be removed from the pool of submissions that goes before our contest judges. Current subscribers must submit the same $20 fee, and their CutBank subscriptions will be extended by one year. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your submission via Submittable immediately should it be accepted elsewhere (to withdraw a single poem, email us at editor.cutbank[at]gmail[dot]com). We are unable to offer refunds.

Entrants will be notified of their submission status no later than March 15, 2015. One winner will receive a $500 award and publication in CutBank 83, our summer 2015 issue. Winners will be required to complete a W-9 form to receive payment. All manuscripts are considered for publication in CutBank. All rights to selected manuscripts revert to the author upon publication. The author grants their permission to have their work electronically archived as part of CutBank 83 in EBSCO International’s subscription-based research database. Current University of Montana students and faculty and former CutBank staff are not eligible for the awards.

NEWS: Exciting Contests Open on December 1st Featuring Phantasmagoric Judges

In just DAYS our 2013 Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction,and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry will open for submissions.

Submissions for all contests are accepted December 1, 2012 through March 1, 2013. Winners receive $500 and publication in CutBank 79. All submissions will be considered for publication in CutBank. The contests’ $17 entry fee includes a one-year, two-issue subscription to CutBank, beginning with the prize issue, CutBank 79.

Please send only your best work. With all three of these awards, weare seeking to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, anoriginal perspective, and willingness to push against the boundariesof the form at hand. For more information, guidelines, and to apply, click here.

Montana Prize in Fiction Judge – Maile Meloy

Maile Meloy is the author of the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter, and the story collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 by the New York Times Book Review and one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times and Amazon.com. Her first book for young readers, The Apothecary, won the 2012 E.B. White Award and was named one of the best children’s books of the year by Publishers Weekly, the Chicago Public Library, and The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two California Book Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction Judge – John D'Agata

John D'Agata is the author of The Lifespan of a Fact, About a Mountain, and Halls of Fame, and editor of The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry Judge – Cole Swensen

Cole Swensen in the author of fourteen books of poetry, most recently Gravesend (U. of California Press, 2012) and Stele (Post-Apollo Press, 2012), and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise (U. of Michigan Press, 2011). She is also the founding editor of La Presse (www.lapressepoetry.com), a nano-press that publishes contemporary French writing in English translation, and the coeditor of the 2009 Norton anthology American Hybrid. She is the recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, the PEN Award in Literary Translation, and the National Poetry Series. She teaches in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University.

Cutbank Open for Submissions

We're all overjoyed to announce that Cutbank is now open for submissions. The submission period runs from today until February 15. Please submit everything to us through our submittable account, right here. For more information on our overall submission guidelines, visit our submission page, right here.

ALSO, don't forget about our contests! Our Big Fish Online Prose Poetry/Flash Fiction contest also opens today and will be open through November 1. Please direct contest submissions through our submittable account as well.

Below is a brief description of the contest. Find more information on this and other upcoming contests right here.

A prize of $200 and online publication will be given for the best piece of writing under 500 words that we receive. Flash fiction, short-shorts, micro-prose, prose poems, poetic prose, just plain short stories–whatever you call your briefest prose pieces, send them our way.

The contest winner will be chosen by the CutBank editorial staff and announced on our website on December 1. All submissions will be considered for both online publication and print publication in CutBank.

News: 2012 Winners for Prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

2012 Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry

It gives us great pleasure to announce the winners of our annual contests:

2012 Winners:

Montana Prize in Fiction (judged by Benjamin Percy): Matt Valentine, “The Hindu Shuffle”

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction (judged by Eula Biss): Daisy Pitkin, “An Algorithm”

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry (judged by Bhanu Kapil): Jeff Downey, “Scapegrace”

Thank you to everyone who submitted! It was a pleasure reading your work.

All three pieces will appear in the new issue of CutBank 77.

Exciting Upcoming Contests

It gives us great pleasure to announce our 2nd ever Big Fish Lyric Essay and Writers on Writing Contest! A prize of $200 and online publication will be awarded to the best piece of nonfiction writing under 5,000 words that we receive in one of the following categories:

THE LYRIC ESSAY: Innovative, sonically pleasing nonfiction prose on any topic is welcome in this category. John D'Agata quoting his teacher Deborah Tall once suggested that a lyric form of the essay "is a kind of essay propelled not by its information, but rather by the possibility for transformative experience." CutBank likes this definition, but we're also excited to see how you interpret such a malleable genre.

WRITERS ON WRITING: We're looking for original, personal takes on the literary arts--form is largely up to you. We're hoping to receive your best craft essays, stylistic manifestos, and impressions on why writing matters. You might even take a crack at defining the lyric essay for us. Smart, self-referential fiction pieces that illuminate the writing process or the importance of writing are also welcome in this category.

The contest winner will be chosen by the CutBank editorial staff and announced on our website May 1. All submissions will be considered for both online and print publication in CutBank. Submissions are accepted from March 1 to April 1 and must be accompanied by a $9 submission fee. Previously unpublished work only. Multiple submissions are acceptable, as long as each one is accompanied by its own submission fee. Simultaneous submissions are also acceptable, but please withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted elsewhere.

CutBank at AWP!

It's an AWP miracle! Issue 76 has just arrived! Furthermore, we will be extending our Fiction, Poetry, and Creative Nonfiction contests until March 7th! Come out and visit us at table A8. Issue 76 includes:

FICTION by Sean Bernard, Joseph Celizic, Josh Denslow, Maggie Maurer, Madeline McDonnell, Erika Seay, Greta Schuler, Todd Seabrook, and J. David Stevens

POETRY by Adam Clay, CAConrad, Hannah Ensor, Sarah Gelston, AB Gorham, Zachary Greenberg, Derek Gromadzki, Lauren Hilger, Brandon Kreitler, Lo Kwa Mei-en, Angie Macri, and Sarah Kathryn Moore

NONFICTION by Barbara Duffey, Cal Freeman, Shara Sinor, and Ryan Spooner

ARTWORK by Morgan Blair and Nicole Simpkins

Chapbook Contest Now Open

Happy New Year everyone! We're pleased to ring in 2012 by opening our first ever chapbook contest. The contest is open from now until March 31. Please direct all submissions to our submishmash page, here. For more information, visit our contest page.

Contest Judges for Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry

Contests are all open from now until February 29, 2012. Click here to submit! Montana Prize in Fiction Judge – Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy is the author of two novels, Red Moon (forthcoming from Grand Central/Hachette in 2012) and The Wilding, as well as two books of stories, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk. His fiction and nonfiction have been published by Esquire, GQ, Men's Journal, Outside, the Wall Street Journal, and the Paris Review. His honors inlcude a fellowship from the NEA, the Whiting Writers' Award, the Plimpton Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics.

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction Judge – Eula Biss

Eula Biss holds a BA in nonfiction writing from Hampshire College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her second book, Notes from No Man’s Land, received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Her work has also been recognized by a Pushcart Prize, a Jaffe Writers’ Award, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. She teaches writing at Northwestern University and is working on a new book about myth and metaphor in medicine with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Howard Foundation Fellowship. Her essays have recently appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best Creative Nonfiction and the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Nonfiction as well as in The Believer, Gulf Coast, Columbia, Ninth Letter, the North American Review, the Bellingham Review, the Seneca Review, and Harper’s.

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry Judge – Bhanu Kapil

Bhanu Kapil lives in Colorado where she teaches writing and thinking at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, as well as Goddard College’s low-residency MFA.  She has written four full-length cross-genre works–The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), and Schizophrene (forthcoming, Nightboat Books).

Big Fish Online Winner

I am proud to announce our 2011 Big Fish Online Winner: "When Lewis Carroll Faced the Jabberwocky" by Todd Seabrook. Thanks to everyone that submitted this year! Please enjoy the winning piece below. Click image to see full sized poem!

Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry – Winners Announced!

We’re pleased to announce the winners of this year’s print contests: the Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry! Thank you to everyone who submitted. We received an unprecedented number of submissions, and were impressed and excited by the power of the submitted work. It was a pleasure reading your writing. The winners will each receive a $500 prize and publication in CutBank 75, out summer 2011. Additionally, several finalists will also be published in the 75^th issue. Montana Prize in Fiction – judged by Eileen Myles

Winner: Anne Ray, Novio, Novia

Eileen Myles writes, “I first admired this story because it felt enormously readable. I felt teased forward as a reader. In its way it's very inward, this story, so though it is taking place in “the world” there was a peephole experience about it so that you felt like you were looking out from the inside in a very graphic way. There’s lots of details but they are never heavy. It’s almost murmured in a way. I knew enough about the narrator but mostly I knew about how the narrator felt about herself. Not so good but still registering things on an exact level like how a moment of successful dancing though quickly abandoned did indeed go to one’s hips in relation to the music and the man you were dancing with and everything else in the world and the writing delivered a sensation that life on almost more a micro level than a macro one is persistently shocking.”

Finalists:

Kim van Alkemade, “His Amy Hours”

Matthew Burnside, “Six Rules to Win the Game”

Sara Leitenberger, “Emergency Donkey: A Travelogue”

Nicole Louise Reid, “A Purposeful Violence”

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction – judged by Thalia Field

Winner: Ryan Flanagan, “Wolf Man”

Thalia Field writes, “this excerpt from a longer work uses language in a way which continually surprises conventions of memoir -- invested in a pedagogy of the poetry of its subject -- to teach and instruct the reader in things we might not know -- the specific ways we might not know the story, which is a memoir and a lesson being learned. Inviting us into imaginative scenarios dovetailing an addict's hallucinatory exit, this piece allows grace into the cracks.”

Finalists:

Maggie Anderson, “Prolonging the Illusion”

Helen Phillips, “Life Care Center”

Catherine Sharpe, “One Thousand Kittens”

Chris Wiewiora, “Now”

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry – judged by D. A. Powell

Winner: Wendy Xu, “I am Your Youngest Poet, and Fill Your Bed with Ink”

D. A. Powell writes, “It's a poem that negotiates that middle space between playful and serious; between the mythic self and the private self. Flaming planets, demons, dreams and wolves could easily be the stuff of legend. But in this poem, they are the forces an artist wrestles with in order to ‘push through ink and digit’ and to lay aside the ache of the ‘disconnected telephone’ and ‘the car sitting in the driveway covered in snow.’”

Finalists:

Sara Deniz Akant, “The Kingdom”

Kerin Sulock, “Applied Psychological Strategy: Neurofeedback”

Adam Tavel, “Having Drank Two-Thirds a Bottle of Riesling During Her Office Hours, Professor Adler Lectures on the Venus of Willendorf"

Arianne Zwartjes, “weld, so irretrievable”

Submissions Open for the Big Fish Online Contest: The Lyric Essay & Writers on Writing

We're thrilled to announce the launch of the Big Fish Online Contest: The Lyric Essay & Writers on Writing, open March 1 - April 1!

In addition to innovative, sonically pleasing essays on topics of your choosing, CutBank is looking for great craft essays, as well as essays on teaching writing or why writing matters. Stylistic manifestos and smart, self-referential fiction pieces that illuminate the writing process are also welcome.

A prize of $200 and online publication will be given for the best piece of nonfiction writing under 5,000 words that we receive in one of the following categories:

The Lyric Essay. Innovative, sonically pleasing nonfiction prose on any topic is welcome in this category. John D'Agata quoting his teacher Deborah Tall once suggested that a lyric form of the essay "is a kind of essay propelled not by its information, but rather by the possibility for transformative experience." CutBank likes this definition, but we're also excited to see how you interpret such a malleable genre.

Writers on Writing. We're looking for original, personal takes on the literary arts--form is largely up to you (our submitters). We're hoping to receive your best craft essays, stylistic manifestos, and impressions on why writing matters. You might even take a crack at defining the lyric essay for us. Smart, self-referential fiction pieces that illuminate the writing process or the importance of writing are also welcome in this category.

All submissions will be considered for print and online publication. For more information, guidelines, and to apply, click here.

CutBank Contests Close Feb. 28

Don't miss your chance to enter the Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry contests! Winners receive $500 and publication in CutBank 75. All submissions will be considered for print publication, and all submitters will receive a one-year subscription to CutBank. For more information and to submit your work, click here.