| Contests
2008 CONTEST RESULTS
02-11-08 - The 2008 SLS-Russia/Kenya literary contest is officially over. We thank everyone who took part in it. The sheer number of extremely strong submissions, out of the total number of close to 700, made the selection process difficult, and we are deeply grateful, for their careful deliberation, to the dedicated SLS readers and the final judges -- Ann Lauterbach in poetry (she had kindly agreed, at the last moment, to replace Robert Hass, who has to drop out), Fiona McCrae in fiction, and Josip Novakovich/Mikhail Iossel in non-fiction. We would like to offer our sincerest congratulations to the contest winners: Jenny Zhang (Iowa City, IA) in fiction, Mark Conway (Avon, MN) in poetry, and Kimberly Elkins (New York, NY) in non-fiction. Their brief bios, as well as those of the second and third place winners in each category, will be posted on this website shortly. The winning entries will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Walrus and Maisonneueve, two of Canada's leading literary and general-interest publications. Again, we are thankful to all the contest participants. In the next few days we will be contacting certain entrants who, in the opinion of the judges, submitted extremely high quality work with offers of tuition scholarships to SLS Russia/Kenya (the latter of which has been rescheduled for December of this year, due to the recent political developments and subsequent unrest in that country). We wish all entrants much success in their noble literary endeavours.
2008 Contest!
02-11-08 - The 2008 SLS-Russia/Kenya literary contest is officially over. We thank everyone who took part in it. The sheer number of extremely strong submissions, out of the total number of close to 700, made the selection process difficult, and we are deeply grateful, for their careful deliberation, to the dedicated SLS readers and the final judges -- Ann Lauterbach in poetry (she had kindly agreed, at the last moment, to replace Robert Hass, who has to drop out), Fiona McCrae in fiction, and Josip Novakovich/Mikhail Iossel in non-fiction. We would like to offer our sincerest congratulations to the contest winners: Jenny Zhang (Iowa City, IA) in fiction, Mark Conway (Avon, MN) in poetry, and Kimberly Elkins (New York, NY) in non-fiction. Their brief bios, as well as those of the second and third place winners in each category, will be posted on this website shortly. The winning entries will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Walrus and Maisonneueve, two of Canada's leading literary and general-interest publications. Again, we are thankful to all the contest participants. In the next few days we will be contacting certain entrants who, in the opinion of the judges, submitted extremely high quality work with offers of tuition scholarships to SLS Russia/Kenya (the latter of which has been rescheduled for December of this year, due to the recent political developments and subsequent unrest in that country). We wish all entrants much success in their noble literary endeavours.
2008 Kenya and Russia Contest
Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry Contest, in Affiliation with The Walrus, The St. Petersburg Review and Maisonneuve magazines.
This year we're trying something entirely new, by merging together our SLS-Russia and SLS-Kenya contests.
The entrance fee for this one, unified contest (held in three genres: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry) remains the same ($15), but the contest winners in each category will receive publication in one of several North American magazines (Maisonneuve, The Walrus, St. Petersburg Review) AND the choice of attending (airfare, tuition, and housing included) EITHER our Russia or Kenya programs.
Since the Kenya contest is already underway, those that have already applied to the Kenya contest will be automatically entered into this unified SLS contest; the new contest deadline will be February 28, 2008. Second-place winners will receive a full tuition waiver for either the Russia or Kenya programs, and third-place winners will receive a 50% tuition discount on either the Russia or Kenya programs.Other hand-picked finalists will be offered tuition scholarships as well which can be applied to either the Russia or Kenya programs.
FINAL JUDGES:
Poetry Judge: Robert Hass
Fiction Judge: Fiona McCrae (Editor-in-Chief of Graywolf Press)
Nonfiction Judge: Josip Novakovich
The complete guidelines for the 2008 contests are as follows:
-One essay, story or novel/memoir excerpt, maximum 25 pages per entry.
-No more than three poems per entry.
-Only previously unpublished work can be submitted.
-Include a $15 reading fee for each entry. This fee should be in US Dollars. Multiple entries are permissible as long as separate reading fees are included. Checks should be made out to Summer Literary Seminars, Inc.
-Include your complete contact information (address, telephone, email address) on the manuscript. Entries are not judged blind.
-All entrants will be notified of the winners in the spring by email.
-Do NOT include a SASE. Cover letters are not required.
-Previous First Place winners may not re-enter.
Entries from Canada may be sent to:
Summer Literary Seminars
KENYA & RUSSIA Fiction/Nonfiction/Poetry Contest (Please indicate genre)
English Department
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8 Canada
Entries from the US and other countries may be sent to:
Summer Literary Seminars
KENYA & RUSSIA Fiction/Nonfiction/Poetry Contest (please indicate genre)
PO Box 16
Brooklyn, NY 11222
These are the complete guidelines, in their entirety.
2006 Contest Results
The first ever SLS-Kenya contests in fiction, poetry and non-fiction have now come to a close. The competition was exceedingly intense. The great majority of submissions were of highest artistic caliber, which made our jurors' work—at every level of the process—extremely challenging and difficult indeed, if also interesting and rewarding. Tough choices had to be made. After much deliberation, the final judges have selected winners in each genre.
We are very happy to congratulate the following winners:
Fiction
1st Place: “Unslung” by Henk Rossouw
Henk Rossouw was born in Cape Town. In 1999, he survived a bomb
explosion in a bar, and later published an account in The Threepenny
Review. From 2001 to 2005, he worked as a foreign correspondent for
Washington DC's The Chronicle of Higher Education, reporting from
countries like Rwanda, Liberia, the Dem. Rep. of the Congo, and
Uganda. During this period he also wrote for Newsweek and covered the
Zimbabwean elections for MSNBC.com. He turned to fiction in early
2005, while documenting the Aids epidemic in rural South Africa for
six months. After moving to Montréal a year ago, Henk attended the Tin
House Summer Writers' Workshop '06 and earned a work-study fiction
scholarship to the 2006 Breadloaf Writers' Conference, in Vermont.
2nd Place: “Troubled Waters” by A. Naomi Jackson
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York by West Indian parents, A. Naomi Jackson is a writer of short fiction and poetry. She recently traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright grant, where she received a M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Sable Literary Magazine, Caribbean Beat, and Mosaic. She is Contributing and Online Co-Editor for Chimurenga Magazine, a publication of African arts, politics, and culture based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently at work on her first novel, Phaedra, a coming-of-age story set in Brooklyn and on the Upper West Side.
3rd Place: “Mr. Peabody” by Kerry Hudson
Kerry Hudson graduated from the writing program at the University of Florida. His work has been published in Columbia, Confrontation and The Sun. He lives in North Carolina. His dog is dead, his spirits are up and he is presently completing his novel, a ribald tale of adventure on the high seas, rife with jaunty merrymaking and snappy repartee.
www.kerryhudson.com
Poetry
1st Place: "Oppenheimer Maps His Coordinates", "Oppenheimer on the Couch", and "Oppenheimer Finds a Lover or at the Store" by Cynthia Lowen
Cynthia Lowen grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College’s MFA program in creative writing. From 2001-2006 she was an editor at Four Way Books and is currently working in documentary film. She lives in New York City.
2nd Place: "My Shoes", "Mississippi Love Poem" and "Above your open mouth, me" by Chelsea Lemon Fetzer
Chelsea Lemon Fetzer is currently working towards her Master of Fine
Arts in fiction at Syracuse University in New York, where she also
teaches writing. She is a video artist as well. Over the past five
years she has partnered with her father, choreographer Ralph Lemon,
documenting the African-American community throughout the southern U.S.
and conducting workshops known as the Memory Project aimed at guiding
young people towards recovering their histories. This experience has
greatly inspired her audacious crossover to poetry. She has nearly
completed her first novel, Rivermaps.
3rd Place: "The Language of Breaking" by Addie Tsai
Addie Tsai received her Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in 2005. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Born Magazine, American Letters & Commentary, NOON: A Journal of the Short Poem, and Forklift, Ohio, among others. In 2004, her work received a scholarship as the top poetry selection for the Indiana University Summer Writing Conference. She lives in Houston, Texas.
Nonfiction
1st Place: “Quartzsite (Foreign Parts)” by Alisa Slaughter
Alisa Slaughter lives in Southern California, where she teaches fiction, creative non-fiction, and literature at the University of Redlands . She was educated at the University of Arizona and Warren Wilson College. Her work appears regularly in Santa Monica Review , and she has also published in Missouri Review and Natural Bridge.
2nd Place: “Lapsed” by Amy Klein
Amy Klein is a journalist and writer. Her essays have appeared in a number of anthologies, including "The Modern Girls' Guide to Guilt" (Dutton 2005). She
received her MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles, in June 2006.
3rd Place: “Muscle Memory” by Erinn Batykefer
Erinn Batykefer is an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is the Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Poetry Fellow. She is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Thanks to all poets and writers who participated in this year's SLS-Kenya contests—it was an unqualified success in our minds.
2006 Contest Information (NOW CLOSED, winners announced 10/16/06):
 The 2006 Summer Literary Seminars-Kenya Fiction,
Nonfiction and Poetry Contests, in Affiliation
with Tin House and Maisonneuve magazines.
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