Welcome to New American Press
We are currently accepting submissions for the 2021 New American Poetry Prize. Winner will receive a contract including a $1,500 advance, publication, and twenty-five copies. Final judge is Quan Barry, whose books include the poetry collections Asylum (2001), Controvertibles (2004), Water Puppets (2011), and Loose Strife (2015). She also wrote the novels She Weeps Each Time You’re Born (2015) and We Ride Upon Sticks (2020). Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Missouri Review, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Barry received an Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Wallace Stegner program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
We're pleased to announce that Corey Van Landingham has selected ELIXIR by Janine Certo of East Lansing, Michigan, to receive the 2020 New American Poetry Prize! Janine is the author of the poetry collection In the Corner of the Living (Main Street Rag, 2017) and the non-fiction book Children Writing Poems: Poetic Voices in and out of School (Routledge, 2018). She was awarded second prize in the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry judged by Kaveh Akbar. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Greensboro Review, Mid-American Review, New Ohio Review, Nimrod, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. Janine will receive $1,200 and ELIXIR will be published by New American Press (release date forthcoming).
Finalists for the 2020 New American Poetry Prize include:
—Bucolia, by Caroline Crew of Atlanta, GA
—the blow and scatter and blow, by Jordan Durham of Columbia, MO
—Spandrel: A Queer Ecopoetics, by Alec Herschman of Ann Arbor, MI
—Terrain Emergent, by Veronica Kuhn of Los Angeles, CA
—Boats in the Attic, by Alison Powell of Berkley, MI
—Steady Girl, by Leona Sevick of Bridgewater, VA
—Mercator, by Alpay Ulku of Antalya, Turkey
—Curiosity, by Patrick Whitfill of Spartanburg, SC
—catastrophiliac, r.i.p., by Caroline Young of Athens, GA
Submissions for the 2020 New American Fiction Prize closed on June 30 and the committee is reading and discussing manuscripts. Winner will receive a contract including a $1,500 advance, publication, and twenty-five copies. Final judge is Nick White, whose books include the novel How to Survive a Summer (Blue Rider/Penguin, 2017) and the story collection Sweet and Low (Blue Rider/Penguin, 2018). Nick teaches at The Ohio State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing. Check out interviews with Nick at Rolling Stone and Kenyon Review.
We're excited to announce that Judith Claire Mitchell has selected I Know You Love Me, Too, by Amy Neswald of Farmington, Maine, to receive the 2019 New American Fiction Prize! Amy is a fiction writer and independent filmmaker. Her written work is forthcoming or has been published in The Normal School, Green Mountain Review, and Bat City Review, among others. She is the recipient of the Dick Shea Memorial Award for Fiction and was a Pushcart Prize finalist. Her screenplay received the Best Screenplay award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival (2008) and her short film Wilderness was awarded an Indiefest award for excellence in film making. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Maine, Farmington. Amy will receive $1,200 and I Know You Love Me, Too, will be published by New American Press (release date forthcoming).
Finalists for the 2019 New American Fiction Prize include:
—Dead Reckoning and Other Stories, by Shannon Kernaghan of Alberta, CAN
—Spin, by Glen Allen of Towson, MD
—Fractured: A Novel, by Emily Franklin of Newton, MA
—The Machine We Trust & Other Stories, Tim Conrad of Kalamazoo, MI
Submissions are now closed for the 2020 New American Poetry Prize. Winner will receive a contract including a $1,200 advance, publication, and complimentary copies. Final judge for the 2020 contest is Corey Van Landingham, author of Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, forthcoming from Tupelo Press, and Antidote, winner of the 2012 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry.
We're excited to announce that Sara Gelston has selected Emily Mohn-Slate's collection The Falls to receive the 2019 New American Poetry Prize! Emily is the author of FEED, which won the 2018 Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems and essays can be found in At Length, New Ohio Review, Racked, Crab Orchard Review, Muzzle Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), Boston University (MA), and Colgate University (BA). She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches at Winchester Thurston School. Emily will receive $1,000 and The Falls will be released in Fall 2020.
Finalists for the 2019 New American Poetry Prize include:
—The Body He Left Behind, by Reese Conner of Tucson, AZ
—Bucolia, by Caroline Crew of Atlanta, GA
—Cloud Hands, Earth Hands, by Donald Platt of Lafayette, IN
—Gentle Slaughter, by Philip Belcher of Asheville, NC
—Playing in Long Shadows, by Nicholas Molbert of Cincinnati, OH
—Rosetta, by Karina Borowicz of Belchertown, MA
Submissions for the 2019 New American Fiction Prize are closed and the reading committee is hard at work. Winner will receive $1,200, publication, and book promotion. Final judge for the 2019 contest is Judith Claire Mitchell, author of the novels The Last Day of the War (Penguin Random House, 2005) and A Reunion of Ghosts (HarperCollins, 2015).
We're pleased to announce that John McNally selected How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, by Rachel Swearingen of Chicago, Illinois, to receive the 2018 New American Fiction Prize! Rachel's stories have appeared in VICE, The Missouri Review, Agni, Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. Her work has garnered several awards, including the 2015 Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction, a 2013 MacDowell Colony fellowship, a 2012 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. Rachel will receive $1,000 and her collection, How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, will be released in 2020.
Finalists for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize included:
—Opihi Tales, by Melissa Llanes Brownlee of Takasaki, Japan
—Sex with Strangers, by Michael Lowenthal of Roslindale, MA
—All That Business with the Heart, by Keith Rosson of Portland, OR
Semifinalists for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize included:
—Semiotic Love, by Brian Whalen of Northport, AL
—Woodlen Welcomes You, by Leslie Johnson of Coventry, CT
—Comparative Seismologies, by Jacob Appel of New York, NY
—Transcendent Gardening, by Edward Falco of Blacksburg, VA
We're pleased to announce that Andrew Grace selected Sarah Aronson's collection And Other Bodiless Powers to receive the 2018 New American Poetry Prize! Sarah's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Portland Review, Bellingham Review, Bennington Review, Yemassee, Camas, St. Petersburg Revie, Cirque, Boiler, Zymbol and elsewhere. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Montana, Sarah currently lives in Missoula, where she operates a small private psychotherapy practice and a public radio program. She will receive $1,000 and her collection, And Other Bodiless Powers, will be released in 2019.
Finalists for the 2018 New American Poetry Prize include:
—Body Fires, by Hannah Baggott of Fayetteville, NC
—The Crossing, by Joseph Fasano of Middletown, NY
—Crossing Bone River, by Jed Myers of Seattle, WA
—The Far End of Haste, by Jane Wayne of St Louis, MO
—North of Paradise, by Rimas Uzgiris of Vilnius, Lithuania
—Notes on an Arsenic Spring, by Mark McKain of St. Petersburg, FL
—Pocketbook, by Patty Seyburn of Newport Beach, CA
We're super pumped that Wayne Harrison's story collection WRENCH was shortlisted for the 2018 Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and a Readers’ Choice Award. Both awards were presented at a ceremony on April 30 by Literary Arts of Portland, Oregon.
We're pleased to announce that Lori Ostlund has chosen Seth Borgen's story collection If I Die in Ohio to receive the 2017 New American Fiction Prize! A native of northeastern Ohio, Seth studied with Michelle Herman and Lee K. Abbott at The Ohio State University before completing an MFA in fiction at the University of Mississippi, where he worked with Tom Franklin and Barry Hannah. Seth's fiction has appeared previously in Water~Stone Review, Brink Magazine and the Green Mountains Review. A current resident of Akron, Ohio, Seth will receive $1,000 and If I Die in Ohio will be released in Spring 2019.
Finalists for the 2017 New American Fiction Prize include:
—The War of Northern Aggression, by Roy Bentley of Pataskala, OH
—New Careers in Science!, by Barrett Bowlin of Vestal, NY
—Cabaret Nation, by Robert Morgan Fisher of Woodland Hills, CA
—Sex With Strangers, by Michael Lowenthal of Roslindale, MA
—This Is Not My Story, by Amanda Marbais of Chicago, IL
—Everybody Dies, by Marléne Zadig of Berkeley, CA
We are pleased to announce that Jesse Lee Kercheval selected A Small Rising Up in the Lungs, by Kit Frick of Brooklyn, New York, to receive the 2017 New American Poetry Prize. A MacDowell Colony fellow, Kit studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. Her debut young adult novel is See All the Stars (Simon & Schuster / Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2018). Kit will receive $1,000 and A Small Rising Up in the Lungs will be released in Fall 2018.
Finalists for the 2017 New American Poetry Prize include:
—Posthumous Noon, by Aaron Baker of Chicago, IL
—Fixed Star, by Suzanne Fischkorn of Redding, CT
—Seducing the Asparagus Queen, by Amorak Huey of East Grand Rapids, MI
—The Haruspicators, by Charles Kell of Charlestown, RI
—The Marriage of Space and Time, by Jed Myers of Seattle, WA
—North of Paradise, by Rimas Uzgiris of Vilnius, Lithuania
We're excited that Gina Frangello selected Welcome to Freedom Point by Marina Mularz of Los Angeles, CA, to receive the 2016 New American Fiction Prize! Recently named a finalist for the Samantha Bee Full Frontal Mentorship Program, Marina also received the 2015 Nonesuch National Humor Writing Prize and was shortlisted by George Saunders for Matrix Magazine's LitPOP Award. She will receive $1,000 and Welcome to Freedom Point will be released in Fall 2018.
Finalists for the 2016 Prize include:
—The Rink Girl, a collection by Mark Brazaitis of Morgantown, VA
—X, a novel by Peter Grandbois of Granville, OH
—The Gravity of Longings, a collection by Kathryn Paulsen of New York, NY
—Locked Gray/Linked Blue, a collection by Kem Joy Ukwu of Bloomfield, NJ
We're pleased to announce that Gabriel Gudding selected The Underneath, by Christopher Cokinos, to receive the 2016 New American Poetry Prize. Recipient of a Whiting Award, a Glasgow Prize, and an N.S.F. Antarctic Visiting Artists and Writers Fellowship, Christopher is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona and an affiliated faculty with the Institute of the Environment and the Global Change program.
Finalists for the 2016 Prize include:
—Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live, by Monica Berlin
—The Ghosts of Lost Animals, by Michelle Bonczek
—The Iron Staircase and Other Disturbing Tales of Woe, by Sydnee Brower
—Nimrod in Hell, by James Capozzi
—Sentences, by Richard Carr
—Pause, Now Pause, by D. Gilson
—Taking the Homeless Census, by Alexis Ivy
—Overseeing the Downfall, by Jeff Nesheim
—The Listening Room, by Kathleen Rooney
—If the Girl Never Learns, by Sue William Silverman
