Literary Journal

Chautauqua%202008.jpgThe 2008 double issue of Chautauqua is now on sale! Orders can be placed by calling the Chautauqua Bookstore at 716-357-2151. This year’s issue of Chautauqua is a special edition celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Chautauqua Writers' Center.

Click here to download the order form.








Business related to the Journal should be addressed to the Editor:

Chautauqua
Dept. of Creative Writing
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
601 South College Road
Wilmington, NC 28403

Philip & Jill Gerard, editors
Phil Terman (poetry) and Diana Hume George
(non-fiction), contributing editors
Rebecca Lee (fiction), associate editor

Download the 2008 Literary Arts brochure


General Guidelines

The editors actively solicit writing that expresses the values of Chautauqua Institution broadly construed: a sense of inquiry into questions of personal, social, political, spiritual, and aesthetic importance, regardless of genre. We consider the work of any writer, whether or not affiliated with Chautauqua Institution, except for members of the Board of the Chautauqua Writers’ Center unless solicited for special issues. The qualities we seek include a mastery of craft, attention to vivid and accurate language, a true lyric “ear,” an original and compelling vision, and strong narrative instinct. Above all, we value work that is intensely personal, yet somehow implicitly comments on larger public concerns—work that answers every reader’s most urgent question: Why are you telling me this?

Poetry: A Chautauqua poem is not just a pretty exercise in language. It exhibits the writer’s craft and attention to language, employs striking images and metaphors, and engages the mind as well as the emotions. It emerges from the poet’s deep reading and knowledge of poetic tradition, reacting to that tradition to reveal a definite aesthetic approach, opening insights into the larger world of human concerns. This may include traditional or experimental work, but each poem should be meaningful to a smart reader beyond the writer’s private code of expression. Submit a maximum of four poems, typed single-spaced, justified left. Include name, address, and e-mail address on each poem.

Short Stories:  A Chautauqua short story, self-contained novel excerpt, or short short demonstrates a sound storytelling instinct, using suspense in the best sense of creating a compulsion in the reader to continue reading—because of deep interest in the characters and their actions, unsettled issues of action or theme, or in some cases sheer delight at the language itself. A superior story will exhibit the writer’s attention to language—both in nuance and detail—and reveal a masterful control of syntax. Fiction should be a maximum of 25 double-spaced, single-sided pages in 12-point font, no extra spaces between paragraphs and all pages numbered-- or about 7,000 words. Include name, address, and e-mail address on first page. Staple submission in upper left corner.

Creative Nonfiction: Most of the same guidelines apply here as for short stories. We are seeking essays that use personal experience as a way of addressing the world, blending a confident and articulate narrator with fascinating subject matter. Again, we value exact and artful use of language and syntax as well as a compelling emotional experience that includes the reader, whatever the subject matter. The best essay is timeless, released from daily headlines but important for its truthful evocation of the world. Creative Nonfiction should be a maximum of 25 double-spaced, single-sided pages in 12-point font, no extra spaces between paragraphs and all pages numbered-- or about 7,000 words. Include name, address, and e-mail address on first page. Staple submission in upper left corner.

Book Reviews: All reviews are assigned by the editors.

Only manuscripts submitted with a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with sufficient postage will be returned. If you do not wish your manuscript returned, enclose a note to that effect along with a business-sized SASE for notification. The editors will make every effort to respond to submissions within three months. All submissions must be original and unpublished in any form. Simultaneous submissions are permitted; please let us know if you are sending submitting simultaneously and notify Chautauqua immediately if a work under consideration is no longer available. Brief cover letters are encouraged. Unsolicited e-mail submissions are not accepted. Chautauqua acquires First North American Serial Rights and reserves the nonexclusive right to reprint the work in a future anniversary issue of the magazine. Payment to authors at this time is two contributor’s copies.

We follow the Chicago Manual of Style.

Chautauqua assumes no responsibility for delay, loss or damage of manuscript submissions.

Reading Period:  Chautauqua welcomes unsolicited submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction from August 15 – November 15. The 2009 issue of Chautauqua will focus on the larger theme of story or storytelling broadly conceived as either telling a story or illuminating the art and craft of storytelling. Manuscripts received at other times will be returned unread.

Mail submissions to:

Jill Gerard, Editor
Chautauqua
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Department of Creative Writing
601 S. College Rd.
Wilmington, NC 28409

More Information:

For more information about Chautauqua, please contact Jill Gerard, editor, at gerardj@uncw.edu or contact Chautauqua directly, clj@uncw.edu.

 

Contest Guidelines

2009 Chautauqua Poetry Contest

Prize: $1,000 and publication in Chautauqua, the literary journal of the Chautauqua Institution. Winner and finalists receive a copy of the journal.

Theme: Story and Storytelling
Entry fee: $20
Judge: Robin Becker
Deadline: November 15, 2008

Send 1 to 3 poems (6 pages maximum), cover sheet, and entry fee to:

Chautauqua Writers’ Center, Poetry Contest
Chautauqua Institution
PO Box 28
Chautauqua, NY 14722


Robin%20Becker.jpgRobin Becker has written seven collections of poetry, including Domain of Perfect Affection (2006), Venetian Blue (2002), The Horse Fair (2000) and All-American Girl (1996). Nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times, Becker has been honored with a Prairie Schooner’s Strousse Award and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. She received the Lamden Literary Award, and her poems and book reviews have appeared in The American Poetry Review, the Boston Globe, The Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. She serves as poetry editor for The Women’s Review of Books and writes a column on poetry and the poetry scene called “Field Notes.” She teaches English and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

 

Previous Winners

Jill Koenigsdorf / prose (2008)
Jill Koenigsdorf won for “Browsers and Grazers.” Koenigsdorf divides her time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she writes, sells antiques and walks dogs, and The Bay Area, where she owned and operated Spring Fever Flowers for twenty four years. Her work has appeared in: ZYZZYVA; Tin House; American Short Fiction; The Southwest Review; The South Dakota Review; The Sun; and the anthology: The Whole Story: Editors On Fiction. Her stories have placed in both the California Voices competition sponsored by Poets & Writers magazine, and in the “New Millennium” contest. She has also received The Peregrine Prize and The McGinnis Award for her short-stories. Her non-fiction appears regularly in The San Francisco Chronicle and The New Mexican newspapers. She has recently completed a novel which she hopes to find a home for in the coming year.


Jude Nutter / poetry (2008)
Jude Nutter, of Edina, Minnesota, won for “Growing up in Bergen-Belsen: Sleeping with Ann Frank,” “Growing up in Bergen-Belsen: The Insect Collector,” “Espenbaum in Bergen-Belsen, May 2007,” and “Road Kill.” Nutter was born in North Yorkshire, England, and grew up in northern Germany in a building that was once part of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her poems have appeared in numerous international journals and anthologies and she is the recipient of several awards and grants. Her first collection, Pictures of the Afterlife (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), was published in 2002. The Curator of Silence (University of Notre Dame) won the Ernest Sandeen Prize from the University of Notre Dame and was awarded the 2007 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. A third collection, I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman is forthcoming from the University of Notre Dame Press. In 2004 she spent two months in Antarctica with the National Science Foundation’s Writers and Artists Program. She has been living and working in Minneapolis since 1998.


Catherine Alden / prose (2007)
Catherine Alden of Oakland, California, wone for her short story "Sickness Can Do That to a Man." Alden trained as a visual artist, receiving an MFA from Alfred University in 1985. Her artwork has been featured in The New Yorker and, in 2004, one of her stories won Honorable Mention in Boulevard’s Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers. "Sickness Can Do That to a Man" is her first published piece.


Patricia Smith / poetry (2007)
Patricia Smith of Tarrytown, New York, is the author of Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection (Coffee House Press, 2006); Close to Death and Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland Books) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Callaloo, TriQuarterly, and in many anthologies including The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. Smith is also a four-time champion of the National Poetry Slam, still the most successful slammer in the competition’s history.


Dan Carlson / prose (2006)
Dan Carlson was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and currently resides in Knoxville. He graduated in 1997 with a BA in English from the University of Vermont. Afterward, he lived three years apiece in Boston and San Francisco where, respectively, where he worked for the Ritz-Carlton and as a marketing copywriter for a small travel company. He has completed two novels, both unpublished to date. Smoke and Static is his first published work of fiction.


Douglas Goetsch / poetry (2006)
Douglas Goetsch of New York City is the author of The Job of Being Everybody, which won the 2003 Cleveland State University Poetry Center open book competition, and Nobody's Hell (Hanging Loose Press, 1999). His honors include three chapbook prizes, the Paumanok Award, a Prairie Schooner Reader's Choice Award, and two poetry fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He runs the creative writing program for incarcerated teens at Passages Academy in the Bronx and is editor of Jane Street Press.


Mark DeFoe / poetry (2005)
Mark DeFoe has published six chapbooks. Bringing Home Breakfast (Black Willow, 1983), Palmate (Pringle Tree Press, 1988), AIR (Green Tower Press, 1998), Aviary (Pringle Tree Press, 2001), The Green Chair (Pringle Tree Press, 2003) and Mark DeFoe’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2004). His poetry has appeared in such magazines as Poetry, The Yale Review, The Paris Review, New Letters, among many others. He lives in Buckhannon, West Virginia.


David Feinstein for "Enoch" / prose (2005)
David Feinstein is a recent graduate of Oberlin College, where he received a B.A. in Creative Writing in 2004. “Enoch,” a work of nonfiction, is his first published piece. Originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he currently lives and writes in New York City.


Ellen Bass / poetry (2004)
Ellen Bass’s most recent book is Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award. Among her other honors are the Elliston Book Award from the University of Cincinnati, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry Levis Prize from Missouri Review, and a fellowship from the California Arts Council. She is also coeditor with Florence Howe of No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973). She lives in Santa Cruz, California.


Gina Ochsner for "The Dog-Saint" / prose (2004)
Gina Ochsner lives in Keizer, Oregon, with her husband and four children. Other short works of hers have appeared in Chelsea, The New Yorker, Nimrod International, Flyway, and The Kenyon Review. Her first collection of stories, The Necessary Grace to Fall, won the Flannery O'Connor Award. In 2005 Houghton Mifflin published a new collection, People I Wanted to Be.