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Nonfiction Contest NOW OPEN
The Wabash Prize for Nonfiction 2017 is considering submissions until April 15. Prize is $1,000 and publication in Sycamore Review. Our judge is Brian Blanchfield. Fee: $20, which includes a copy of the prize issue for all entrants. See our contest page for more details.
Winners Selected for Wabash Prizes in Fiction and Poetry
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…
Wabash Prizes in Fiction and Poetry NOW OPEN
Send us your fiction and poetry by November 15th, 2016 and enter our 2016 Wabash Prize in Fiction or Poetry. Submissions cost $20 and the fee includes a copy of the contest issue. Learn more about the guidelines for submission under our Contest tab. Final Fiction Judge: Adam Johnson Final Poetry Judge: Reginald Dwayne Betts First Prize: $1000 and publication in Sycamore Review
Review: Roy Jacobsen’s Borders
Review: Roy Jacobsen’s Borders by Jeff Amos Roy Jacobsen’s Borders begins with the whimsical anecdote of a miller’s attempt to construct a small footbridge over the Our River between Luxembourg and Germany, but swells into a tale of history, family, and identity in a community of fluid borders. Set primarily in a small valley in…
Best American Poetry 2016 Shout Outs
We are happy/grateful/lucky to announce that two members of the Sycamore Review family have poems coming out in Best American this year. Please go here to check out Allison Davis’s poem “The Heart of It All + A Free Beer,” which first appeared in Sycamore Review’s issue 26.2. While there, we hope you’ll also read our ever-incredible faculty advisor Marianne Boruch’s poem “I Get to Float Invisible.”
Review: Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry
by Bess Cooley, Managing Editor It makes sense to begin where Ben Lerner begins The Hatred of Poetry—with an excerpt from Marianne Moore’s poem “Poetry.” She writes, “One discovers in / it, after all, a place for the genuine.” Lerner writes that there’s “no such thing” as a genuine poem. Poetry only offers a place for it, and maybe that’s at the root of hatred for it—a hatred this book understands and tries to permeate rather than diffuse. It’s Moore’s “a place for the genuine” [emphasis added] that Lerner lights on as a fairer expectation to put on poetry. He…
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…
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
Published in Paperback by Graywolf Press, 2016 Review by Bess Cooley Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a near perfect example of form and content fitting together, informing one another. This book of nonfiction questions and pushes against gender binaries and traditional gender roles, while also questioning and pushing against the nonfiction genre itself, rejecting the traditional role of writing. Nelson’s prose has done this all along: her book Jane: A Murder mixes together various nonfiction styles, while Bluets doesn’t adhere to tradition and, at first glance, doesn’t look like nonfiction at all—more like prose poems or small meditations on the…
Winner of 2016 Wabash Prize in Nonfiction Announced
We would like to congratulate Kristin Nichols on winning first place in our 2016 Wabash Prize for Nonfiction with her essay, “Young Men Fall.” We would also like to recognize the excellence of Bob Brunk’s essay, “The Smell of Sunlight on Stones,” our runner-up in the contest. Congratulations Kristin and Bob! Michelle Tea, the final judge in our contest, had the following to say about these two essays: 1st Place: “Young Men Fall” I was taken with this story from the start, intrigued by the author’s strategy for sharing it (as it must be shared) with others.. Such a critical story, the passing…
