BEST OF THE NET 2023; Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020, 2022); PUSHCART poetry finalist
Annual Literary Contest
April 1 – June 7, 2023
Patricia Engel
$1,000
Fiction Prize, Judge
Patricia Engel is the author of The Faraway World; Infinite Country (New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, Reese’s Book Club pick, National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, New American Voices Award and Florida Book Award winner, and more); The Veins of the Ocean (Dayton Literary Peace Prize winner, New York Times Editors’ Choice, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year); It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris (International Latino Book Award winner); and Vida (PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and Young Lions Fiction Award finalist; Florida Book Award, International Latino Book Award and Independent Publisher Book Award winner, New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and in 2017 Patricia was the first woman to be awarded the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana––Colombia’s national prize in literature). Patricia has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, and Key West Literary Seminar among others, and is the recipient of an O. Henry Award. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Oprah Daily, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, Catapult, and in numerous anthologies. She is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Miami.
A. Van Jordan
$500
Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize, Judge
A. Van Jordan is the author of four collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (2007); and The Cineaste, (2013), W.W. Norton & Co. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), a United States Artists Fellowship (2009), and a Lannan Literary Award in Poetry (2015). His forthcoming book, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again, will be released in June of 2023 (W.W. Norton & Co). He is a Professor in the Department of English at Stanford University.
Grace Talusan
$500
Michael Steinberg
Nonfiction Prize, Judge
Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction. Her writing has been supported by the NEA, the Fulbright, US Artists, the Brother Thomas Fund, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.
Jess Ruliffson
$500
Graphic Lit Prize, Judge
Jess Ruliffson is an award-winning graphic novelist who has taught comics at The School of Visual Arts, The Sequential Artists Workshop, and Boston University. Her work has appeared in Freeman’s Tale of Two Americas, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gainesville Sun, BuzzFeed, The Nib, Pantheon Books, Wilson Quarterly, and The Oxford American. Her graphic novel, Invisible Wounds, is out now from Fantagraphics Books. She is currently at work with her partner on a comics series about critical care nursing in the ICU for The Boston Globe.
Rules & Guidelines
Previous judges have included Martha Collins, Andres Dubus III, Jennifer Haigh, Terrance Hayes, Robert Lopez, Celeste Ng, Jerald Walker, and Afaa Weaver.
FEE: $18.00/entry
GUIDELINES
- Cover sheet required with name, address, telephone number and email. Email and/or phone MUST be included to be considered. Please include cover sheet in the same file as the actual submission. Do not put your name on the manuscript itself. Final judges will be choosing on the basis of the quality of your work. Please indicate the genre of your piece next to the title.
- 12-point font, double-spaced, .DOC or .DOCX attachment. We accept online submissions only through Submittable. No emails please.
- Each entry: Fiction or Nonfiction: 25-page maximum, double-spaced; free-standing excerpts from books also accepted. Poetry: 3-poem maximum. Graphic Lit: Original artwork, multiple panels (no single image pieces), 1-6 pages preferred, maximum 8-10 pages, in JPG/PDF format.
- You may submit more than once but must pay a separate fee for each entry.
- You may submit simultaneously elsewhere, but please email us immediately if accepted at another journal.
- We will not accept previously published work. Solstice has first publication rights, but copyright reverts to you upon publication. We will publish the piece after the Summer Awards Issue in our Archives.
- If you won last year’s contest, you must skip a year before resubmitting to the contest, but we encourage you to submit work to Solstice for general publication.
- We will announce the winners, finalists, and editors’ choice approximately 6-8 weeks after the contest deadline.
- After announcing the winners, finalists, and editors’ choice, all contest submissions will be automatically considered for standard publication unless you indicate otherwise.
- The $18.00 entry fee must be paid online at the time of entry.
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