May/June 2016

Our Writing Contests Issue features arts organizations offering prizes more valuable than cash, twenty-five first-book contests, and the Anatomy of Awards; a profile of novelist Adam Haslett; an interview with New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul; articles about trauma and storytelling, writers and imposter syndrome, and selling your story collection; plus writing prompts, over 100 contests with upcoming deadlines, and more.

Features

The Deepest Place: A Profile of Adam Haslett

by Kevin Nance
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In his brilliant and devastating new novel, Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett navigates an enormous darkness, allowing his readers to bear witness to the persistence of love in the face of mental illness.

Special Section

More Than Just Money: Arts Organizations Offering Prizes More Valuable Than Cash

by Michael Bourne
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In our special section on writing contests, we take a look at three literary organizations offering prizes that include more than just cash—including time and space to write, career development, and more.

Narrowing the Field: Twenty-Five First-Book Contests

by Dana Isokawa
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Information about twenty-five first-book contests for poets and fiction writers ready to submit their manuscripts.

News and Trends

Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

by Staff

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Masande Ntshanga’s debut novel, The Reactive, and Emma Straub’s third novel, Modern Lovers, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

Literary MagNet

by Dana Isokawa

The newly revamped Literary MagNet highlights an emerging author alongside the journals that have published that author’s work. This issue’s MagNet features essayist Angela Morales, whose debut collection, The Girls in My Town, is out in April from University of New Mexico Press; and a selection of print and online journals that first published the essays in her book, including River Teeth, Arts & Letters, 1966, the Baltimore Review, and Literary Mama.

The Practical Writer

Selling Your Story Collection: When They Really Want Your Novel

by Michael Bourne
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An author, an agent, a publisher, and an editor explore the often difficult path to selling a story collection—when what most publishers want is a novel.

The Literary Life

This Is Your Brain on Fear: Trauma and Storytelling

by J. T. Bushnell
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How do we record traumatic events when our survival often depends on us not thinking at all? Fiction writer and essayist J. T. Bushnell explores this question through the lens of a house fire, combining ideas of memory, storytelling, and...

The Time Is Now: Writing Prompts and Exercises

by Staff
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Explore your parental relationships, gain unexpected access to somebody else’s data, and assess the qualities of a favorite celebrity—three prompts to ignite the creative process.

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