Welcome to Black Warrior Review

Congratulations to the Winners of the BWR Seventh-Annual Contest

The winning pieces can be found in our latest issue, 38.2, which will debut at AWP 2012 this week.

1st Place Fiction/Prose: Harry Leeds, “Upper/Lower”
1st Place Nonfiction: Janice Lee, fragments from Reconsolidation
1st Place Poetry: Nicholas Gulig, “Pray/Tell”

Congratulations to our finalists as well: Hannah Christy Benning and Spencer Kingman Graham, Andi Boyd, Lisa Cattrone, Ewa Chrusciel, Eric Ellingsen, Chris Ellis, Matthew Gavin Frank, Vincent Guerra, Stacy Hardy, Kate Rutledge Jaffe, Douglas A Neagoy, Roy Scranton, Colleen O’Connor, & Ryan Vine.

Thanks to all who entered.

Also, many thanks to our judges, Gary Lutz (Fiction/Prose), John D’Agata (Nonfiction), & Prageeta Sharma (Poetry).

BWR announces 2012 Partnership with Summer Literary Seminars!

BWR is excited to announce its partnership with the Summer Literary Seminars annual Unified Literary Literary Contest! We are thrilled to have Mary Gaitskill judging the fiction, Tony Hoagland judging the poetry and University of Alabama alum and former BWR editor Ander Monson for nonfiction (see below for bios).

Contest winners in fiction and poetry will have their work published in print in the Fall/Winter 2012 issue of BWR as well as prominently featured online in Canada’s premier literary magazine, The Walrus (online here), in dynamic online magazines Joyland, Branch, and DIAGRAM; Winners also receive two exciting new prizes, sponsored by the Center for Fiction and SLS creative partner Graywolf Press. Additionally, they will have the choice of attending (airfare, tuition, and housing included) any one of the SLS 2012 programs — in Montreal, Quebec, Vilnius, Lithuania (August), or Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya (December).

Second-place winners will receive a full tuition waiver for the program of their choice, and third-place winners will receive a 50% tuition discount.

A number of select contest participants, based on the overall strength of their work, will be offered tuition scholarships, as well, applicable to the SLS 2012 programs.

The deadline for submissions is February 28, 2012.

For full contest guidelines and to submit your work, visit www.sumlitsem.org/slscontest.html.

Fiction Judge: Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and Veronica, which was nominated for the 2005 National Book Award, National Critic’s Circle Award, and L.A. Times Book Award. She is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, which was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner in 1998. Her newest collection of stories is titled Don’t Cry (2009). Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the feature film of the same name starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. The film received the Special Jury Prize, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Gaitskill’s stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2002 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. She has taught at U-C Berkeley, the University of Houston, New York University, Brown and Syracuse University. Mary Gaitskill was born in 1954 in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1981 Gaitskill graduated from the University of Michigan, where she won an award for her collection of short fiction The Woman Who Knew Judo and Other Stories.

Poetry Judge: Tony Hoagland’s latest book of poems, Unincorporated Persons In The Late Honda Dynasty, was published by Graywolf Press in 2010. His recognitions include the Jackson Poetry Prize, the O.B. Hardisson Award, and the Mark Twain Award, for humor in American Poetry. His previous collection, What Narcissism Means To Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award in poetry in 2004. In 2005 his book of essays about poetry and craft, called Real Sofistakashun, was published by Graywolf. He teaches in the writing program at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson low residency MFA program.

Nonfiction Judge: Ander Monson is the author of a number of paraphernalia including a website, a decoder wheel, several chapbooks, as well as five books, most recently Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (Graywolf Press, 2010) and The Available World (Sarabande Books, 2010). He lives in Tucson where he teaches at the University of Arizona and edits the journal DIAGRAM

and the New Michigan Press.

Issue 38.1, Interruption

is now available! The Fall 2011 issue features work from Sarah Rose Etter, Brandon Davis Jennings, Kathleen Rooney, Derek Gromadzki, Leon Baham, Esvie Coemish, Shelly Taylor, Zachary Schomburg, Brandon Shimoda, Karen Volkman, dawn lonsinger, Christina Manweller, Afton Wilky, Joelle Biele, JP Gritton, Joy Wood, Lee Milena Goodman, JA Tyler, Elizabeth Hall, Dan George, Farid Matuk, and Allison Titus, with comics from Edgar R. McHerly and Nick St. John, and featured art by Helen Pynor.

Check for it at your local bookstore or click on “subscribe” to get your very own issue!

Congratulations to the 2011 SLS Contest winners!

Blair Bourassa, for his story for his story “Love is Such an Old Fashioned Word,” and
Lillian Bertram, for her poem “I Believe the Far Fields”.

Each will receive tuition, airfare, and accommodations to the 2011 SLS program of their choosing (Montreal, Lithuania, or Kenya), plus publication in Black Warrior Review and online in The Walrus.

Congratulations also to second- and third-place winners Matthew Baker, Rebecca Rukeyser (fiction), and Chloe Honum and Justin Boening (poetry)!

Judges Jayne Anne Phillips and Matthew Zapruder were impressed by the overall quality of submissions–as were we! It was an enormous pleasure to work with SLS this year. For more information about SLS, please visit their website here.

Issue 37.2, The Nudity Issue, is now available!

Our Spring/Summer 2011 issue features new writing from Graham Foust, Elizabeth Robinson, Joshua Cohen, Claire Hero, Megan Volpert, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sarah Gridley, J.S.A. Lowe, Roxane Gay, Bhanu Kapil, Matt Cozart, Jessica Bozek, Gro Dahle (translated by Rebecca Wadlinger), Eric Weinstein, Tyler Flynn Dorholt, Paul Siegell, Ben & Sandra Doller, Kimberly Burwick, Cori A. Winrock, Sasha Steensen, Lito Elio Porto, Shane Castle, Philip Tate, Aaron Kunin, Max Hipp, Marc DuBois, Karen Holmberg, Amy Benson, & Molly Schultz; art from Joseph McVetty & comics from Nicolai Troshinsky; & a chapbook by Michael Sikkema & Jen Tynes.

Buy one now by clicking on the “Subscribe” link above!

We’re also happy to announce that our Nudity Feature has a sound art component, with original tracks from Espen Sommer Eide (Phonophani), Antye Greie (AGF), Scott Morgan (loscil), Andrew Pekler, Marc Richter (Black To Comm), & Janek Schaefer. Click on the “Sound Art” link above to listen.

BWR Blog up and running

Be sure to stop in often and check our blog for contributor news, upcoming BWR events, and the like. Links to our recent posts are on the right.

Black Warrior Review now takes online submissions

In case you haven’t heard, Black Warrior Review has begun to exclusively take online submissions. More details on our submission guidelines, and a link to the submission manager, can be found at our “Submit” page.