2016 Wabash Prize in Fiction, as selected by Adam Johnson Winner: Caleb Tankersley, “Dean” Johnson: Humor and physical desire always triangulate back to sadness in this young husband’s narrative of his attempts to adjust to his wife’s degenerative illness. No digression, however, will assuage the inevitable, and the final image of a man trying to bypass his wife’s wasted body to communicate brain-to-brain is haunting and affecting. Runner up: Stefani Nellen, “How the Mind Can Exist in a Physical Universe” Johnson: A quiet story of subtle observation, this tale of a young scientist who falls into the orbit of a famous mathematics duo is…
From Fiction
So Much for That Winter
A Review of Dorthe Nors’ So Much for That Winter by Hannah Rahimi Cynicism and hope jostle for position in Dorthe Nors’ new pair of novellas, as Nors addresses crucial questions of contemporary existence with great humor and humanity. In “Minna Needs Rehearsal Space,” an avant-garde musician is torn between a need for creative solitude and a desire to connect, easily menaced by the brash reality of adult life—a smug mothers’ group, a narcissistic ex-lover, an overbearing sister, and acquaintances whose attachments and demands take on parasitic proportions. Her artistic temperament renders her particularly vulnerable to the callousness of contemporary…
Announcing the 2015 Winners of the Wabash Prizes for Fiction and Poetry!
1st Place Poetry: “Elegy with the Wing of a Bird” by Jody Rambo Mary Szybist had this to say about the winning poem: “I’m moved by the way ‘Elegy with the Wing of a Bird’ inhabits the bewilderment of grief. We sense with the speaker all the ways her mother is and isn’t present after death, and share the speaker’s anticipation, past all reason, of her mother’s return. The poem directs its sorrow outward not toward an abstraction or a divinity, but more unexpectedly, to a community of sisters. There is urgency in this poem to maintain this intimate ‘we,’ which,…
The Flashcard Contest!
January 1, 2015 – February 1, 2015 Send us your flashiest pieces, no more than 500 words each. First prize is $100, publication online, and publication on a Flashcard that will be distributed with Sycamore Review at AWP. Click here for full submission guidelines.
Sycamore Review’s 2014 Pushcart Nominations
We are pleased to announce that we have nominated the following authors for the Pushcart Prize: Poetry Nancy Chen Long, “Blazing Black Holes Spotted in Spiral Beauty” Cintia Santana, “Qasida of Grief” Nonfiction Richard Froude, “Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead” Eson Kim, “Up Against” Fiction Julialicia Case “A Certain Kind of Animal” Nicholas Maistros “The Importance of Being Helpful” We would like to thank all of our contributors for sharing their work, their time, and their voices with us, so that we may in turn share it all with you.
The Wabash Prize for Poetry and Nonfiction Extended!
The December 1 deadline for the Wabash Prize for Poetry and the Wabash Prize for Nonfiction has been extended until Monday, December 8! That means you have one more week to submit your fantastic pieces for the chance at the $1000 first place prize, publication, and accolades from Bob Hicok (poetry) or Leslie Jamison (Nonfiction). And, if you’ve already submitted, you can submit again for the discounted reading fee of just $5 per additional poem/essay! Click here for directions on how to submit.
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
By Katie McClendon In The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters continues her tradition of weaving a story filled with tension. Waters is known for novels that combine historical elements with plot-driven storylines often fueled by romance. Her first book, Tipping the Velvet, became a BBC miniseries and won the Betty Trask Award. Affinity, her second novel, won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her third novel, Fingersmith, won the South Bank Show Award for Literature. Other novels she has written have been shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize,…
Writing YA: An Interview with Patricia Henley & Elizabeth Stuckey-French
Written by Natalie Lund Earlier this fall, I found out that Patricia Henley and Elizabeth Stuckey-French co-authored a young adult novel, Where Wicked Starts. I’ve always loved reading YA, but I was especially excited to hear about this publication because Henley and Stuckey-French have both been a part of my education as a writer. My first year in Purdue’s MFA…
Meditation & Mentorship: An Interview with Ruth Ozeki
I’d never written a fan letter, but after finishing Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time-Being and enduring a series of events procuring the book that seemed straight of Ozekiland (a library adventure, a doppelgänger, a loss, a recovery), I wrote to Ozeki and asked if she would speak to me. I was completely unsurprised, and delighted, that she agreed. I am a poet haunted by the right ways to wrangle with questions of identity, biculturalism, hybridity, Asian-ness, Americanness, femininity, feminism, mothers, aging. I’m haunted by questions of whether the airless unit of language can convert something as complex as…
Presenting the winners of the 2014 Wabash Prize for Fiction
In this year’s Wabash Prize for Fiction, judge Rebecca Makkai awarded the top prize to the “surefooted and organic” story “Flotsam” by John Englehardt, with Jasmine Sawers’ “At the Lung” as the runner-up. Rounding out the finalists were: “Spawn of Doctor Macabre” by Steve Trumpeter “Lost in the Flood” by Jordan Farmer “Prince of Nigeria”…
