We’re so excited to let you know that the results for the Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition are in. And the winning manuscript is …
The Sound of Her Voice (working title) by Veronica Montes
Veronica Montes was born in San Francisco and raised in the Filipino American enclave of Daly City, California. Her short stories have appeared in print journals such as Bamboo Ridge and Prism International, as well as in many anthologies including Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, Growing Up Filipino, and Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas. Her flash fiction appears online in various journals including SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, and Lost Balloon, among others. She is the author of Benedicta Takes Wing & Other Stories (Philippine American Literary House, 2018).
We’re also thrilled to announce that we will additionally be publishing a finalist from the Spring 2019 competition:
Nice Wanton (working title) by Alison Powell
Alison Powell is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oakland University and lives with her husband, son, and daughter in Metro Detroit. Her lyric essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Black Warrior Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Sonora Review, and Proximity Magazine; recent poetry can be found in Alaska Quarterly Review, Boston Review, Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, and more. Her book of poems, On the Desire to Levitate, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and was published by Ohio University Press in 2014. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology, and she has received awards from the Greensboro Review, Proximity Magazine, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and more. Originally from Indiana, Powell completed her MFA in Poetry at Indiana University, and her PhD in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York with a specialization in the Romantic poets.
We couldn’t be happier to add these two amazing chapbooks to our series. The Sound of Her Voice (working title), a collection of flash fiction, and Nice Wanton (working title), a collection of lyric essays, will both be published by Black Lawrence Press in fall 2020. We’re so happy to welcome both Veronica and Alison to the BLP family!
Our finalists and semi-finalists were:
FINALISTS (alphabetical)
Language Lessons by Caroline Mei-Lin Mar (poetry)
The Sound of Her Voice by Veronica Montes (prose)
Nice Wanton by Alison Powell (prose)
We Know This Will All Disappear by Melissa Ragsly (prose)
Our Club for Everyone But the Sun by Sara Saab (poetry)
dear :: dear by Jennifer Richter and BT Shaw (poetry)
Canary by Katherine Zlabek (prose)
Love Letters to the Revolution by Angelique Zobitz (poetry)
SEMI-FINALISTS (alphabetical)
Call a Body Home by Michael Alessi (prose)
our lady of deciduous teeth by Chelsea Bodnar (poetry)
Things That Can Be Lost by Douglas Bruton (prose)
Red Spell: Flash Fictions by Lydia Copeland Gwyn (prose)
Home-Starved/Salt-Drunk by Joanna Gordon (poetry)
Revenge Body by Sally J. Johnson (poetry)
Curing Season by Kristine Langley Mahler (prose)
What Happened Was: by Anna Leahy (poetry)
Winesburg Appendix by Michael Martone (prose)
Aping Nature by Shannon McLeod (prose)
A Finite Number of Chances by Conor McNamara (prose)
Tomorrow Music by Pete Stevens (prose)
OF NOTE: If you submitted a chapbook to our June Open Reading Period, we’re still reading and considering your manuscript! We aim to have responses out by late fall. If you’re not certain if you submitted to the Black River Chapbook Competition or the June Open Reading Period, please log into your Submittable account to check.