Let’s cut to the chase; you’ve been waiting to hear about the Magpie Award for Poetry results for a while now! We offer up the shortlist as a means of compensation for the weeks of suspense. Poets are listed alphabetically by last name.
Kelli Allen Roxanna Bennett Chelsea Comeau Susan Ford Charlene Kwiatkowski David Ly Pattie Palmer-Baker Roger Vickery John Waldheim Cara Waterfall
Congratulations to the shortlisted poets, and many thanks to all those who submitted, as well as to our hardworking first judges Emily Osborne and Daniel Cowper!
Now we really hate to do this, but this is a tough field of competitors and the final results are going to be in the oven a bit longer. We hope to release the names of the winner and runners up of the 2019 Magpie Award for Poetry, as chosen by final judge Renée Saklikar within the next week. Please be patient as the shortlist bakes to a delicious golden brown!
The competition standard was very high. There wasn’t a bad story amongst them, and they were varied, with several in different styles pushing this one close.
I liked many things about ‘Girls’. The language was completely believable, with dynamic metaphors drawn from the narrator’s crazed imagination and steeped in the Southern Gothic world from which she comes. ‘come back home stained with his child’; ‘but I’ve cut my lifeline real long, long and round my hand like a ribbon ‘cross a Christmas present.’; ‘she talked all sand’. So many others. Yet the elegance of the writing never detracted from the flow of the story just swept me into another, so different world. The construction was good too, a steady development to the fiery climax.
The narrator’s voice was strong, clear, twisted, disturbing. Very well realized, and completely believable. I kept thinking that she might back away from her extremity, but she kept upping it. A lot to cram into a five page story. Yet it held me throughout, had a clear arc, and left a disturbing aftertaste.
So well done. It will stay with me and I have no hesitation, despite other strong contenders, of awarding it this year’s Raven.
– CC Humphreys
Congratulations to Cheryl Wollner, who wins the $300 prize, and whose story will be published in Pulp Literature Issue 22, Spring 2018. Many thanks to CC Humphreys for his careful reading and for returning to judge this year’s Raven Contest. And as well, thank you to all the entrants who provided such excellent stories and made our job and Chris’s so much harder …. and yet so enjoyable!
CC (Chris) Humphreys has written more than a dozen novel for adults and young adults, including the Arthur Ellis winner, Plague. His latest book, Chasing the Wind, is available here.
November 15th draws near, and soon the winner of the 2018 Raven Short Story Contest will be announced! As the days grow shorter, so to does the list of contenders. Below, listed alphabetically by author first name, are the authors whose stories have made the shortlist.
Cheryl Wollner for ‘Girls Who Dance in the Flames’
Colin Thornton for ‘Ten Minutes in Maine’
Erin MacNair for ‘Camping with Narwhals’
Jody Hadlock for ‘She Walks Alone’
KW George for ‘Shadows’
Kate Felix for ‘Fingered’
Kim Clark for ‘Pissing in the Pocket of the Lone Arbutus Estates’
Margot Spronk for ‘The Web’
Shanon Sinn for ‘The Proposition’
Stephanie Vernier for ‘Cashew Milk’
The big reveal from judge CC Humphreys is just around the corner. Sign up for the Pulp Literature newsletter to receive updates on our submission windows or future contests.
Channel your inner raven and bring us your cleverest short stories! The Raven Short Story Contest is open until October 15th, and we want to see what inventive short stories you have hidden in your nests.
Our Judge
CC Humphreys, prolific author of The Jack Absolute Series, Shakespeare’s Rebel, Plague, and Fire, along with the newly released Chasing the Wind, returns to judge the 2018 Raven Short Story Contest. Past winners include ‘The Tape’ by Elaine McDivitt (Issue 18), ‘The Handler’ by Pat Flewwelling (Issue 14), ‘Black Blizzard’ by Emily Linstrom (Issue 10), and ‘The Inner Light’ by Krista Wallace (Issue 6).
First prize in the Raven Short Story Contest is $300 and print and e-publication to a loyal international readership. The 2018 winner will be announced November 15th! Previously unpublished short stories of up to 2500 words will be considered–enter before midnight, October 15th!
Ten days and ten entries remain. We are pleased to release the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize shortlist. Listed below are the authors whose stories will be considered, by flash-master Bob Thurber, in alphabetical order.
Amy Neufeld Jen Knox Kate Felix Kate Felix Liz Cox Liza Potvin Nicholas Christian Rob Taylor Robert Runté Ron. Lavalette
The list is shorter, and the stakes are higher. Best of luck to these ten flashes of fiction!
A hummingbird sighting always feels a little bit magical, and with the many entries for this year’s Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, we are feeling awe-struck! We’re pleased to announce the longlist: the top 27 entries listed alphabetically by author last name. Authors listed twice have two entries in the longlist.
Alex Reece Abbott Ariel Basom Lauren Bentley Nicholas Christian Liz Cox Kate Felix Kate Felix Marissa Fischer Aleisha Hendry Terrence Huntington Jen Knox Jen Knox Ron. Lavalette Kim Martins Jenn Marx William P. Masters Gabriella Morrison Sadi Muktadir Amy Neufeld Liza Potvin Robert Runté Megan Rodgers Rob Taylor Annis Teller Annis Teller Hannah van Didden KT Wagner
Thank you to everyone who entered! The shortlist will be revealed in July, and the winners, picked by Bob Thurber, will be announced July 15th.
Looking for inspiration? Peruse these snippets from past Hummingbird Contest winners. All that furious fluttering should get the juices flowing.
2017 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 17 ‘Just Down the Hall’ by Jeanette Topar
Truth was, Mrs Cole had become a little afraid of 902. Late in the evenings she’d hear 902’s footsteps slide across the tiled hallway, hesitating outside her door. “Is this my place?” her neighbour would ask. Mrs Cole would mute the volume on her TV and hold her breath as she sat quietly in her tidy living room waiting for the woman to shuffle away. The last few times Mrs Cole had encountered her, 902 was wearing nothing but a gray slip that blended with the colour of her skin and matched her hair — she appeared little more substantial than a shadow or dust mote hovering in the hall.
2016 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 13 ‘Xuefei and his heart’ by Rebecca Wurz
Xuefei sat on a metal stool in the corner of the operating theatre. He’d been awake all night, and now, sitting in the quiet of the deserted room, he felt drowsy. He had transported the heart of the criminal executed at dawn from the prison infirmary to the university hospital’s surgical suite, built especially for this demonstration. American transplant surgeons, collaborating with Chinese colleagues, were scheduled to do the first heart transplant on Chinese soil.
2015 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 9 ‘The Last Neanderthals’ by Christina Crocker Escribano
You say, No one is going to eat us, but I know better. The path of the forest is necklaced in footprints. The surface of the snow is scuffed and bloodied. They left no remains of skin or bone, just a fistful of hair that looks like our own. We stop and watch, for a long time, as if the blood was an outline, a shadow, a spirit blooming in the ice. You say the soul lifts from the body, but I see that it doesn’t.
2014 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize Winner, Issue 5 Here I Lay Down My Heart by Rob Taylor
Hayim lifted Mima toward the dhow. The captain knelt, grabbed her by her armpits and lifted her up, then lowered her into the hull. Hayim tossed in his duffle bag and for a moment, in the thin skim of ocean and sand that skirts Bagamoyo, stood apart from all that mattered in his world. Then he hoisted himself on board. Mima was already playing with the livestock and making friends with the other children. In the weeks since their arrival in Tanzania she had learned a mouthful of Swahili and was now in full song. Samaki! Kuku! Mbuzi! she pointed and guessed, and the children laughed and nodded and were impressed. Hayim climbed atop a mound of rice bags, maybe seven or eight deep, and pressed his duffle bag into the curve of the hull, punching it here and there with his fists, pounding out their shape. Between punches images of Tel Aviv flashed in his mind — their old apartment, the table and chairs, dishes and books he’d filled it with. Those few weeks when Mima had gone to preschool and life had felt normal and the word normal had plumped with meaning. Then Hayim lay down and his mind cleared.
Last week we promised a surprise you would not want to miss, and today’s the day. Of our shortlist, three poems caught Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s eye for the fifth annual Magpie Award for Poetry. Without further delay, here are her picks and comments.
2nd Runner-up – $50 prize
‘My desk’ by Angela Caravan “An ambitious poem, which needs some attention to line breaks and form. That being said, the language intrigues. The possibility of what the language is attempting here: admirable.”
First Runner-up – $50 prize
‘All I Need is a Chair, My Red Piano, and’ by Christine Leviczky Riek “I Enjoyed the dense construction, which leads reader into the world of the poem, telling a story of loss and longing, using repetition of key phrases and a great evocation of a particular time and place.”
Winner – $500 prize
‘Leather wraps both our shoulders, and I will call you my lungs, my falconer, guidepost’ by Kelli Allen “I read this lovely poem as a sonnet with its fourteen line construction and those interesting, rhymic two line couplets cascading a series of stories in image. Wonderful!”
These poems will appear in Pulp Literature Issue 20, Autumn 2018. Congratulations to our winners, and a huge thank you to Renée Sarojini Saklikar for serving as this year’s judge. Thank you as well to all our contestants for your participation and suppourt!
Spring is in full swing, feathers are flying, and bees are buzzing. The winners of the Magpie Award for Poetry will be announced on May 15th, the same day that the earlybird rate for the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize ends (enter soon!). And our Magpie, Judge Renée Sarojini Saklikar, who has just as much an affinity for flying creatures as we do, will be launching her new book, Listening to the Bees, tomorrow …
Listening to the Bees
Can poetry matter? In an age where information is rarely parsed into verse and 120 character limits reign supreme, it’s a valid question at many a poet’s roundtable discussion. However, for Renée Sarojini Saklikar, the answer is simple: Yes.
Listening to the Bees (Nightwood Editions, 2018) is a book of essays and bee poems in collaboration with Dr. Mark Winston. The recent and alarming decline of honey bee populations deserves attention, and Renée’s poetry has risen to the occasion. This joint artistic and scientific venture moves between the deeply personal connection humans have with bees and meticulously gathered facts for a written experience of what it means to listen to bees.
Renée Sarojini Saklikar is Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey, British Columbia. Trained as a lawyer and with a degree in English Literature, Renée is currently teaching creative writing for SFU and Vancouver Community College. Renée’s first book, children of air india, (Nightwood Editions, 2013) won the 2014 Canadian Authors Association Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Renée’s poetry, essays, and short fiction has been published in many literary journals and anthologies. Her work has also been adapted into other art forms, including musical and visual installations. Pulp Literature Press thanks Renée for serving as the judge for 2017 and 2018 Magpie Award for Poetry.
What’s that old magpie nursery rhyme? One for sorrow, two for joy … ten a surprise you won’t want to miss! The Magpie shortlist has been selected by our poetry editorial team Daniel Cowper and Emily Osborne, and we tip our hats to these ten entries. Names appear in alphabetical order (by last name) and those with multiple entries under consideration are listed more than once.
Kelli Allen Angela Caravan Daniela Elza Rula Jurdi Charlene Kwiatkowski Christine Leviczky Riek Scott-Patrick Mitchell Cara Waterfall Cara Waterfall Sarah Zwickle
Thank you to all who submitted! Renée Sarojini Saklikar‘s picks will be revealed May 15th, so stay tuned for that surprise you won’t want to miss!
Did you miss the deadline for the Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest this year? Well, we love flash fiction so much, we have two contests! The Hummingbird Flash Fiction Contest opened May 1st and will close June 15th. Early bird entry fee ends May 15th!
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