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Contest Information
Chautauqua Fiction Contest
It is our pleasure to congratulate the winner, the runner-up, and the finalists in the 2009 Chautauqua Fiction Contest.
- Winner: Abby Geni, “Silence”
- Runner-Up: Thomas Kennedy, “Maybe Baby”
Finalists:
- Jacob Appel, “Ghost Wedding”
- Jacob Appel, “A Kaddish for the Missing”
- Jacob Appel, "The Topless Widow of Herkimer Street"
- Jacob Appel, “The Resurrection Bakeoff”
- Alethea Black, “Mistake”
- Rebecca Lawton, “The Wish”
- Lisa Norris, “Please Use the Password”
- Rita Ariyoshi O'Farrell, "Concert in G-Mynah"
The 2009 Fiction Contest was judged by David Crouse. Crouse is an award-winning short story writer and teacher. Former Chair of the Writing and Literature Program at Chester College of New England, Professor Crouse joined the faculty at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in January 2007. Professor Crouse's stories have appeared in some of the country's most well regarded journals, including The Greensboro Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, and The Beloit Fiction Journal. His comic book writing has been anthologized in The Darkhorse Book of the Dead, published by Darkhorse Comics. Crouse's short story collection Copy Cats was awarded the prestigous Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in 2005. Copy Cats was subsequently nominated for the Pen-Faulkner in 2006.
The runner-up in the 2009 Fiction Contest is Thomas Kennedy. Crouse shares these words about Kennedy’s story, “Maybe Baby.” [This story] dramatizes a childhood episode in a manner that makes that episode resonate with meaning beyond the frame of childhood. It’s an adult story about kids, a pragmatic story about romance, and the images of of those subjects--the song dedication pouring out of the radio, the nervousness of that first coupling--strike with real power and feeling even as the story takes them apart in front of us.
The winner of the 2009 Fiction Contest is Abby Geni.
Crouse says, “There were many things to like about all the finalists in this year’s contest but only one story—Silence—gave me that palpable sense of an individual consciousness that makes a piece of fiction stand apart.” He continues, “[the story] so wonderfully evokes the sensibilities of its main character that each sentence crackles with dramatic tension. We’re so locked into Jesse’s emotional state that each small gesture—the checking of a notebook for correct measurements, the curling up on a couch for a nap—reverberates with the force of Jesse’s distinct personality, and by story’s end we feel some of what Jesse feels as the trees slip away in a blur beneath him.” Congratulations, Ms. Geni.
Announcing the 2010 Chautauqua Non-Fiction Contest
Prize: $1,000 and publication in Chautauqua, the literary journal of the Chautauqua Institution. Winner and finalists receive a copy of the journal. All manuscripts considered for publication.
Essays should address the theme of nature and the natural world. Submit non-fiction essays up to 7000 words.
Entry fee: $20
Judge: TBA
Please check back for details regarding submissions for the contest. Manuscripthub.com is no longer able to process contest entries. We will post more information on submission process by July 31, 2010.
Contest submissions will be accepted between August 1 and November 1, 2010.
