2013 Roxana Rivera Poetry Contest Guidelines

PLEASE ANNOUNCE TO CLASSES

 

2013 Roxana Rivera Poetry Contest Guidelines

 

ANNOUNCING THE 2013 ROXANA RIVERA MEMORIAL POETRY CONTEST

 

Join SIUC's Creative Writing and Women's Studies Programs as we honor the memory of a wonderful poet and celebrate Women's History Month.

 

The Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest honors the memory of Roxana Rivera (1977-2003), who was a first-year creative writing graduate student from Lynwood, California. Roxana, a graduate of California State University Long Beach, earned her Bachelor's degree in Women's Studies and English. While at SIUC, Roxana was a PROMPT Scholar and a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of English.

 

To remember this special woman and poet, a campus-wide poetry contest will be held, with divisions for both undergraduate and graduate students.

 

Amazon.com Gift certificates will be awarded as prizes in both divisions:

$50 for the winning entry, $25 each for two runner-ups

 

This contest is open to all students currently enrolled at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Students of all majors are encouraged to participate in this contest.

 

This Year's Theme: "My Sister, My Self"

 

DEADLINE: Friday, March 22, 2013 at 4pm

 

Submission Guidelines: Send an entry packet with:

 

1) A cover sheet with your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and poem title(s). Indicate on your cover sheet whether you are an undergraduate or graduate student.

 

2) No identifying information on the poems themselves, please. One poem per page. There is no entry fee, but there is a limit of three poems per entrant. When sending entries via e-mail, please send in rtf or doc file format (no docx) —send all poems as one file.

 

The contest theme is provided to spark your creativity, and entries that reflect upon the theme in the lives of women are particularly welcome.

 

Entries accepted via e-mail only at

roxpoetrycontest(at)gmail.com

 

(replace (at)with @ in sending e-mail).

---

Cross-genre Pub News for alum Rick Pechous

Recently heard back from Helix Literary Magazine about how they want to
publish a poem I wrote called "Bullet Holes Through a Stop Sign."
Unfortunately it's a print publication so I can't include a link.

Good news and congrats, Rick!

Staci Schoenfeld update!

Second-year MFA poet Staci Schoenfeld has lovely news:

Hi Allison, 

Huzzah! An acceptance for a poem, "On Becoming Open" from University of Louisiana at Lafayette's journal, Rougarou! In other (older) news, my poem "World Wide Web" was nominated for the 2012 Best of the Net Anthology by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and my chapbook "Breadcrumbs" was named a finalist in Winged City Press's 2012 Chapbook Contest.

Congrats, Staci!!!!

Update on Amie Whittemore!!!

Fantastic news from Amie Whittemore (MFA '10, poetry):

My poems "Velleity," "Blackberry Season," and "Dolphin Hour" were selected
to win the third annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
Poetry Prize by Ava Leavell Haymon. The prize includes $1,000, publication,
and a reading in New Orleans for the festival.

Congrats, Ms. Amie!!!

Melissa Scholes Young update!

Melissa Scholes Young (MFA fiction "11) writes with a prolific
publication update:


Brain, Child accepted my nonfiction essay "Something Borrowed" for
publication in summer 2013. Mandala Journal published my nonfiction essay
"On the Verge of Everything" and Sliver of Stone published my short story
"Holding Hands." In fall of 2012 I also had the pleasure of interviewing
Anne Panning and Stephanie Watts Powell over at Fiction Writers Review.

http://fictionwritersreview.com/interviews/its-just-work-an-interview-with-anne-panning

http://fictionwritersreview.com/interviews/an-interview-with-stephanie-powell-watts

http://sliverofstonemagazine.com/melissa-scholes-young/

http://www.mandala.uga.edu/issues/10/young_verge_p1.php

http://www.brainchildmag.com/
>
> Take care,
> Melissa
>
>
> --
> Melissa Scholes Young
> American University, Washington, D.C.
> http://www.melissasyoung.com
> http://www.piperism.com

News from Sequoia Nagamatsu!

Lovely news for third-year fiction student Sequoia Nagamatsu!

Black Lawrence Press, an imprint of Dzanc, has named my manuscript,
Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, a semi-finalist in their most
recent Black River
Chapbook Contest.


Here's the link: http://blacklawrence.wordpress.com


Congrats, Sequoia!

News from Elena Pearson (MFA '07)

Great news from MFA '07 Elena Pearson:

OVS accepted "Sequence" and "Unswept" for publication in the Winter
2013 volume. I just approved the proofs. I am not certain when this
will be released, but I hope to see it at AWP.

Congrats, Elena!!!

Audio poetry from an alum!

Mark Jay Brewin, Jr. (MFA '11, poetry) writes:

Ahoy there and Happy Holidays, Allison!

I am thrilled to announce that my Creative Audio version of my poem "Seven
Places I Have Found My Grandmother in the Last Six Years" is featured on The
Collagist's website for their December 2012, Issue 41! Please please please,
check it out!

Scroll down and find the link Creative Audio at:
http://www.dzancbooks.org/the-collagist/

Congrats, MJB!

Re: MFA Blog News!

Great news for first-year poet Lucien Meadows:

Happy December news-- my character poem, "Trans/Verse," was recently
published by Boxcar Poetry Review
(http://www.boxcarpoetry.com/main.html).

Today, I received word that BPR has selected my poem as one of their
2012 Pushcart Prize nominations. Hooray!

Congrats, Lucien!

Recent and forthcoming publications from SIUC MFA alums

Poetry alum Elena Pearson (MFA '07) has a poem, "Skyview Lake, Fourth of July," forthcoming in Moon City Review 2013.

Fiction alum (MFA '12) Nick Ostdick has a short story published in a new Main Street Rag Publishing Company fiction anthology called "Aftermath: Stories of Secrets and Consequences."

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/Aftermath.html

Congrats, Elena and Nick!

All is Not Quiet on the Pinckney Benedict front

news from SIUC fiction prof Pinckney Benedict's sabbatical:

NYC friends: I'll be reading at NYU as part of a series called
"Literary Publishers Present," readings hosted by editors featuring
their magazines' or presses' authors (so far they've had McSweeney's,
Paris Review, Granta, and Bellevue Literary Press). Zoetrope:
All-Story will be featured on Thursday, February 28, at 7 PM. The
host/introducer is the wonderful Adrienne Brodeur, founding editor of
Zoetrope, and the other readers are David Means and Kathryn Harrison.
There will be wine and cheese afterward!

Sounds like a great time, PB!

Fiction MFA Chris Allen wins theater award!!!

Congrats to Chris Allen, MFA 2007 (fiction) on this fabulous
honor--it's cross-genre too!

"Stitches," a one-act play I wrote and directed, took Outstanding Production
(the top honor) at the South Carolina Theatre Association Community Theatre
festival. The show will represent South Carolina at the Southeastern Theatre
Conference in Louisville next March.

Thanks,
Chris Allen

Wonderful news, CA!!!

Copper Nickell publishes MFA alums

Work by fiction alum Adrienne Rivera (MFA '12) and by poetry alum
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum (MFA '09) appears in the new issue of Copper
Nickel!
Adrienne's fiction piece "Murdered Girl" and Andy's poem "Ghost Gear"
appear in Issue 18 of this great journal. Congrats to Adrienne and
Andy!
For more about Copper Nickel, visit:
http://www.copper-nickel.org/

Mark Brewin (MFA '11) strikes again

The hits just keep on coming for Mark Jay Brewin Jr (MFA '11, poetry0:


Just letting you know that Southern Humanities Review picked up my
poem "Donation Doctor's Visit" and that Burnside Review accepted "A
Bridge is like a Tongue" for publication in its upcoming issue.

Congrats, MJB!

Outstanding News for Ruth Awad (MFA '12)

via Facebook:
I just found out I won the Outstanding Thesis Award. Out of the entire university!!!! I am now utterly dizzy with excitement and disbelief! A world of thanks to Judy Jordan, Allison Joseph, Jon Tribble, and Rodney Jones for your wonderful letters and for being incredible mentors. J'adore!

Fantastic news, Ruth Awad!  The honor is well-deserved!!!!!

Congrats to Andrew McSorley!!!

Congrats to third-year poet Andrew McSorley, whose poem "Winter's
Ritual" appears in Issue 2 of the Lindenwood Review, the literary
journal published by Lindenwood University!

BTW, the Lindenwood Review is reading submissions for Issue 3 until
December 15, 2012 (guidelines here):
http://www.lindenwood.edu/lindenwoodReview/submissions.cfm

Congrats to Austin Kodra!

Great news for second-year poet Austin Kodra:

I was honored and excited to find out that my poem "Against Nostalgia"
wasaccepted for publication in Barnstorm.

Congrats to Mark Brewin (MFA '11)

Good news in abundance for poetry alum Mark Jay Brewin, Jr:

I am pleased to announce that New Madrid has accepted my poem "Puerta la
Reina, First Movement" for its upcoming issue, and that Booth Online Journal
has accepted my poem "A Borrowed Childhood Memory, Alloway, 4 July 1967" for
their Spring 2013 line-up. Pretty stoked.

Congrats, Mark!!!

2012 Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival!!!

It's that time of year again--the Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary
Festival is this week!!!

Here is the schedule for the 2012 Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival:

2012 Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday, October 24 – 26
(All Events in SIUC's Morris Library)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24

8:00 – 9:15 p.m.
Readings by Wally Swist and Scott Blackwood
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Poetry Panel featuring Katie Chaple, Wally Swist, Daniel Nathan Terry,
and Marcus Wicker
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

2:00 – 3:15 p.m.
Poetry Readings by Daniel Nathan Terry and Marcus Wicker
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
Reception and Book Signing featuring all festival readers
1st Floor Rotunda (Morris Library)
(sponsored by the SIUC Dept. of English and the Southern Illinois
University Bookstore)

4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Readings by the 2011 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award Winners in Poetry and Prose
Katie Chaple and Patricia Ann McNair
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26

11:00 – 12:00 a.m.
Fiction Panel featuring Scott Blackwood, Patricia Ann McNair, and Peter Orner
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

2:00 – 2:50 p.m.
Fiction Reading by Peter Orner
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)


3:00 – 3:50 p.m.
Publishing Talk by Kevin Morgan Watson, founder, publisher, and Editor
in Chief of Press 53
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)
(sponsored by the SIUC Dept. of English Graduate Writers Forum)

The festival is sponsored by GRASSROOTS, the Southern Illinois
University Carbondale Department of English's undergraduate literary
magazine. The Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival is made possible
through funding from the SIUC Fine Arts Activity Fee, the SIUC Dept.
of English Graduate Writers Forum, the SIUC Creative Writing Program's
Visiting Writers Series, the SIUC Department of English, the SIUC
College of Liberal Arts, and CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW.

Here are biographies of the writers who will be reading at this year's
Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival:

Scott Blackwood is the newest member of the graduate faculty in the
MFA program in creative writing at Southern Illinois University
Carbondale. His novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here (New Issues Press,
2009), won the AWP Prize for the Novel, the Texas Institute of Letters
Award for best fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Literary
Award for fiction. His award-winning collection of stories, In the
Shadow of Our House, was published by SMU Press in 2001. His fiction
has appeared most recently in American Short Fiction, the Gettysburg
Review, Boston Review, and Southwest Review, and the title story from
his collection is featured on the New York Times Book Review's "First
Chapters" website. His feature essays and reviews have appeared in the
Austin Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Bookslut, and Revenant
Record's NPR-featured American Primitive Volume II. He's a recipient
of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, two Texas
Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and was a distinguished
writer-in-residence at Wichita State University. Blackwood holds an
MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University.

Katie Chaple, this year's winner of the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award
in Poetry, is the author of Pretty Little Rooms (Press 53, August
2011). She teaches poetry and writing at the University of West
Georgia and edits Terminus Magazine. Her work has appeared in the
Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, The Rumpus,
Southern Humanities Review, StorySouth, and Washington Square, among
others.

Patricia Ann McNair, this year's winner of the Devil's Kitchen Reading
Award in Prose, is the author of The Temple of Air (Elephant Rock
Books, 2011), which was also named a finalist in the Chicago Writers
Association's 2nd Annual Book of the Year Awards. has lived 98 percent
of her life in the Midwest. She has managed a gas station, sold pots
and pans door to door, tended bar and breaded mushrooms, worked on the
trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and taught aerobics.
Today she is an Associate Professor in the Fiction Writing Department
of Columbia College Chicago, where she received the Excellence in
Teaching Award as well as a nomination for the Carnegie Foundation's
US Professor of the Year. McNair's fiction and creative nonfiction
have appeared in various anthologies, magazines, and journals
including American Fiction: Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging
Writers, Other Voices, F Magazine, Superstition Review, Dunes Review,
River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and others.
She is also published in The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in
Creative Nonfiction edited by Dinty W. Moore. She's received numerous
Illinois Arts Council Awards and Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction
and nonfiction. McNair divides her time between city and small town
with her husband, the visual artist Philip Hartigan.
Peter Orner is the author of two novels, including Love and Shame and
Love, a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, and The Second Coming of
Mavala Shikongo, Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His
first book, Esther Stories, received the Rome Prize from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, and is being re-issued next year with an
introduction by Marilynne Robinson. Orner is also the editor of two
non-fiction books, Underground America and Hope Deferred: Narratives
of Zimbabwean Lives, both published by McSweeney's. His work has
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Granta, and Best
American Stories. Born in Chicago, Orner currently lives in San
Francisco.

Fantastic News for Brooks Rexroat (MFA '10)

Brooks Rexroat, MFA "10 (fiction), has won the very prestigious short
storycompetition hosted in London by the Telegraph newspaper!

The story is titled "Angel of Death" and can be accessed here:

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/theshortstoryclub/louiseatmyt/481/angel-of-death-by-brooks-rexroat/

As winner, Brooks will travel to London next year to meet with editors
and publishers from across Great Britain!

Congratulations, Brooks!!!!