Carmen Maria Machado Names Christine G. Adams Winner of Creative Nonfiction Contest
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Guest judge
Carmen Maria Machado
has named "Terms of Venery" by
Christine G. Adams
as the winner of the 2018
Prairie Schooner
Creative Nonfiction Contest. Adams will receive a prize of $500 and publication in the Spring 2019 issue of Prairie Schooner. Machado named "How to Age with Grace" by
E. J. Koh
and "Lifespans" by
Rochelle Hurt
as this year's runners-up. Essays by the runners-up will appear later in 2019. The journal editors would also like to also recognize with honorable mentions the work of two other essayists whose work caught our attention:
Cam Rentsch
for his essay "East of Aztlán" and
Sophie Paquette
for her essay "Ugly Girl Ghost."
All contest entrants will receive a copy of the issue in which the winning essay appears. To be sure not to miss out on Adams's, Koh's, or Hurt's moving essays, subscribe now!
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Guest judge Carmen Maria Machado praised Adams's essay "Terms of Venery," saying, "This smart, heartbreaking essay about the taxonomies of sexual violence and birds could hardly be more gorgeous or more timely."
Winning writer Christine G. Adams is a PhD student in creative nonfiction at Ohio University. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she served as the Fred Chappell fellow and poetry editor of the
Greensboro Review
. Her work can be found in
Best New Poets 2014
,
Best New Poets 2016
, and is forthcoming from
Grist
,
Passages North
, and
Best New Poets 2018
.
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Machado praised Koh's piece "How to Age with Grace" as a "tender, beautifully written essay about the unique and punishing relationships mothers and daughters moved me beyond measure."
E. J. Koh is the author of
A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize, and her memoir
The Magical Language of Others (a longer book-length take on this essay's themes) forthcoming from Tin House. Her poems and translations have appeared in
Boston Review, Columbia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books,
PEN America, and
World Literature Today. She has accepted fellowships from The American Literary Translators Association, Kundiman, and The MacDowell Colony.
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Of Hurt's essay "Lifespans," Machado wrote, "This lovely, formally inventive essay about time and mental illness surprised and flattened me."
Rochelle Hurt is the author of
In Which I Play the Runaway (Barrow Street, 2016), winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Prize, and
The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems (White Pine, 2014). Her poetry and nonfiction appear in
Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She lives in Pittsburgh and teaches at Slippery Rock University.
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The Annual Creative Nonfiction Contest welcomes submissions every summer, from May to August, and the winning essay is selected by a different guest judge each year. Cost to submit is $20, and all entrants receive a copy of the issue in which the winning essay appears.
Founded in 1926,
Prairie Schooner
is a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at UNL and is endowed by Glenna Luschei.
Prairie Schooner
publishes fiction, poetry, essays and reviews by beginning, mid-career, and established writers. Fee-free general submissions in all genres are welcomed between September 1 and May 1 each year.
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Prairie Schooner | University of Nebraska | prairieschooner@unl.edu | prairieschooner.unl.edu
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