Contest Results, Awards, and Dedications
Emerging Writer’s Contest Since 1971, Ploughshares has been committed to promoting the work of up-and-coming writers. After last year’s inaugural fiction contest, this was our first year accepting
submissions in all three genres—poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. We are pleased to announce the following winners and runners-up. The winners will each receive $1,000 and be published in the Winter 2012-13 issue, edited by John Skoyles and Ladette Randolph.
FICTION
Winner: Jasmine Sawers, “The Culling”
First Runner Up: Lucinda Nelson Dhavan, “Embracing the Moon”
Second Runner Up: Neil Fischer, “Yucatán Boy”
POETRY
Winner: Jen Silverman: Five Bath Poems
First Runner Up: Christine Adams: “Luminous Matter,” “Gulping:
A Pastoral,” “Elegy for the Giant Pacific Octopus,” and “Mono Lake, California”
Second Runner Up: T. J. McLemore: “Dream for the Eve of My Father’s Death,” “The Mad Miner,” “Surfaces Reflect Things,” and “F.B.C.”
NONFICTION
Winner: Jacob Newberry, “What You Will Do”
First Runner Up: Kerri Power, “Belief in Evolution”
Second Runner Up: Suzanne Farrell Smith, “The Pearl”
Many thanks to all of the authors for sharing their work with us. The Emerging Writer’s Contest is open to all writers who have yet to publish a book, and is open for submissions from February 1 to April 2. Please visit our Web site (pshares.org) for guidelines, and we look forward to reading your work.
Awards Our congratulations to the following Ploughshares writers, whose work has been selected for these anthologies:
Best Stories Angela Pneuman’s “Occupational Hazard,” from the Spring 2011 issue, edited by Colm Tóibín, and Jennifer Haigh’s “Paramour,” from the Winter 2011-12 issue, edited by Alice Hoffman, will both be included in The Best American Short Stories 2012. The anthology is due out October 2012, with Tom Perrotta as the guest editor and Heidi Pitlor as the series editor.
Best Essays Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough’s “Objects of Affection,” from the Spring 2011 issue, edited by Colm Tóibín, has been selected for The Best American Essays 2012. The anthology is due out October 2012, with David Brooks as the guest editor and Robert Atwan as the series editor.
Best Poetry Michael Morse’s “Void and Compensation (Facebook),” from the Spring 2011 issue, edited by Colm Tóibín, has been selected for The Best American Poetry 2012. The anthology is due out September 2012, with Mark Doty as the guest editor and David Lehman as the series editor.
Pushcart Bruce Bennett’s “The Thing’s Impossible” and Jane Hirshfield’s “In a Kitchen Where Mushrooms Were Washed,” both from the Fall 2011 issue, edited by DeWitt Henry, have been selected for
The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses, which is due out on November 2012 from Bill Henderson’s Pushcart Press.
Guest Editor Dedications
Carl H. Klaus is a diarist and essayist, and a specialist in nonfiction writing. He was founding director of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, and is professor emeritus at Iowa, where he co-edits Sightline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction. His books include My Vegetable Love and its companion Weathering Winter, as well as Taking Retirement: A Beginner’s Diary and Letters to Kate: Life after Life, essayistic works that reflect on his life and marriage, gardening and food, work and retirement, and his concern with time, change, and mortality. His latest books are The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay, and the co-edited collection, Essayists on the Essay: Four Centuries of Commentary.
David Hamilton is a memoirist and essayist, and an influential literary editor. He is Professor of English at the University of Iowa where he teaches medieval literature (his early training) across a wide range of interests into modern and contemporary writing, especially the essay and lyric poetry. From 1977 until 2009 he was the editor of The Iowa Review, sustaining it as one of America’s premier literary journals and a welcome home to literary and personal essays. His special interest as an essayist and scholar is Montaigne. His own works include Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm, Textualities: Essays on Poetry in the United States, and Ossabaw, a collection of poems.