With spring long gone and summer slipping away, we’re excited to close out the season with an exciting announcement: we have the short list for the Spring 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition! From well over 700 entries (our largest chapbook competition to date!) we’ve narrowed things down to 19 semi-finalists and 8 finalists. (As always, this was definitely not easy! We read and agonized over many more than these 27 exciting, well-crafted entries. There are excellent manuscripts that aren’t reflected in this list, and there were a few chaps we loved that were withdrawn along the way. We appreciate every one of you deeply. Please keep making our jobs difficult.)
Entries were read blind by an editorial panel consisting of judges (previous BRCC winners and published finalists) and BLP editors. Entries were kept blind until today–so we can unveil the lists to you!
To all the semi-finalists, congrats & thank you! We will announce the winner from among our list of finalists shortly.
FINALISTS (alphabetical)
Bayna Bayna: In-Between by Zeina Azzam (poetry)
Ecology by Derek Berry (poetry)
This Is Not A Frank Ocean Cover Album by Alan Chazaro (poetry)
Whole Histories of Space by Liana Jahan Imam (fiction)
A Music of Ribs by Liz Kellebrew (fiction)
The Path the Lost Girls Take by Kathryn Kulpa (fiction)
Blood Box by Zefyr Lisowski (poetry)
The World at the End of the Garden by Gillian Walker (fiction)
SEMI-FINALISTS (alphabetical)
Child Witch by Hussain Ahmed (poetry)
Is It Enough to Have Feathers? by L.A. Alden (poetry)
Breach by Stacey Balkun (poetry)
Midwest Mix: Boskeydell Bombs by Bryce Berkowitz (poetry)
Some Places Worth Leaving by Dani Burlison (fiction)
Other Women by Rita Ciresi (fiction)
Dear Fox Dear Barn by Ben Clark and GennaRose Nethercott (poetry)
It’s As If You Don’t Love Me Anymore by Judith Cooper (fiction)
Frontier by Clinton Craig (fiction)
Organizing the Rain by Rebecca Doverspike (poetry)
Hijito by Carlos Gomez (poetry)
The Drum, Like the Heart, Keeps Faulty Time by Sian Griffiths (fiction)
I Am Not What I Set out to Be by Chelsea Harris (fiction)
Oh The Days by Sue Mell (fiction)
When I Think of Firmament by Nicholas Molbert (poetry)
Marge and Maybelline by William Polf (fiction)
It’s Not You :: It’s Everything by Hannah Rego (poetry)
Body, This by Lois Roma-Deeley (poetry)
We Did this to Ourselves by Pete Stevens (fiction)