Contests

The submissions period for our 2009 contests is now closed, and we are pleased to announce the results. Thank you to all who entered. All winners and finalists listed below will be published in SER Vol. 28.1, set to arrive early 2010.

World’s Best Short Short Story Contest
judged by Robert Olen Butler

Winner: Martin Cloutier, “Strong Like Bull”

Finalists: Hal Ackerman, “Walk Through”
Megan Mayhew Bergman, “What You Need is a House”
Heather Bryant, “Take Me Home in Your Pocket, Peter Lin”
Beth Couture, “Talk”
Kat Gonso, “Escape Plan”
Robert Kettering, “Weather Patterns”
Michael Lowe, “Voodoo”
Magdalen Powers, “Lion and Woman and Lord Knows What”
Anthony Varallo, “At Ease”

SER Poetry Contest
judged by Julianna Baggott

Winner: Dina Hardy, “On the Sidewalk by the Hospital I Find a Torn Corner of a Book Called The Problem of Pain from the Chapter Human Wickedness, Page 59 & 60”

Finalists: Michael Estes, “Landfall, Infant”
Dina Hardy, “A Brief History of Razors and Shaving”
Alison Harney, “Fourth of July”
Tina Karelson, “Sometimes We Forget There Are Potatoes”
Trent Nutting, “A Bedtime Story” and “The Heron”
Marie Ostarello, “Trapeze Artists”
Molly Tenenbaum, “Impossible Aubade”
Elizabeth Volpe, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”

SER Narrative Nonfiction Contest
judged by David Vann

Winner: Heather Bryant, “Habitat”

Finalists: Angela Hamilton, “We Should Get Used to This”
Emma Rainey, “Guru Girls”

About Our Judges

Robert Olen Butler is the author of ten novels and four collections of short stories. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and two National Magazine Awards, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and an NEA grant, as well as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Sewanee Review, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and many other journals. He holds a distinguished Frances Eppes Professorship at Florida State University.

Julianna Baggott is the author of sixteen books, published and forthcoming, including national bestseller Girl Talk and Which Brings Me to You (co-written with Steve Almond); three books of poems, and seven novels for young readers, most notably The Anybodies trilogy, under the pen name N.E. Bode. Twenty-two foreign editions of her novels have been published or are forthcoming overseas. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including Best American Poetry 2000, 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Everyday (ed. Billy Collins), The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry, Glamour, Ms. Magazine, and read on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.

David Vann is the nationally bestselling memoirist of A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea, featured on NPR, Voice of America, and Fox News. His work can be found in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Outside Magazine, Outside’s GO, Men’s Journal and Writer’s Digest. His most recent endeavor, Legend of a Suicide, won the 2007 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction.

podcasts

recent contributors

()