“Shenandoah” Announces Winner of 2015 Bevel Summers Prize for the Short Short Story
“May Apples” by Ellen Birkett Morris of Louisville, Kentucky, won the 2015 Bevel Summers Contest for the short short story, which was sponsored by “Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review.”
The honorarium for the prize is $1,000 and publication of her work; it will appear in the fall issue of “Shenandoah.” Morris has been published in “Antioch Review,” “Notre Dame Review,” “South Carolina Review” and is a “Pushcart Prize” nominee.
The winner was selected from a pool of almost 400 writers sent to “Shenandoah” in the spring. Editor R. T. Smith says of the contest, now in its sixth year, “Every year we receive more and better entries in the short short story genre, which is ideal for a web journal like ours. Morris’ story, or ‘flash fiction,’ is remarkable for its vivid particularity and range of implication. It’s about youth and age, art and nature, resistance and acceptance. A lovely, thrifty story.”
The judges also named five honorable mentions, which will also be published in the fall issue: “The Tiger” by Ihab Hassan of Bayside, Wisconsin; “Two Lives” by Mary Byrne of Paris, France; “Eat a Pancake, Eat Your Joy” by Nick Fuller Googins of Venice, California; “The Bridesmaids” by Brenda Peynado of Cincinnati, Florida; and “West of Orion” by Maxim Loskutoff of Portland, Oregon.
The 2016 version of the contest will open in late March 2016 and close in early April. Writers should visit the announcements link on the “Shenandoah” website (shenandoahliterary.org) for notification of exact dates. All submissions are through the website’s Submittable link, and any writer not a part of the W&L community may submit up to three stories (as three separate submissions). There is no entry fee, and next year’s prize will be $500.
“Shenandoah” was founded as a print literary journal in 1950 by members of the Washington and Lee University community, including Tom Wolfe and Cy Twombley. Sixty years later, after establishing itself as one of the elite journals in the country, the journal became an exclusively online publication. It now presents, in addition to two full issues a year, a poem of the week, a blog and interviews with writers and artists.
The fall issue will include an anthology of poetry from the 20 years of Smith’s term as editor, featuring work by W. S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, Natasha Trethewey, Claudia Emerson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Stephen Dunn, Linda Hogan, Brendan Galvin and 45 others. Access to the journal is free to the public.
For further information contact the magazine’s office at (540) 458-8908 or e-mail .
