Submissions are currently open for the Montana Prize for Fiction and New Montana Voices.
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Our submission period closed on Oct 1 for issue #23, "Our Living Planet," to be published February 2019.
Our Living Planet
For issue #23, Whitefish Review seeks submissions in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art, and photography looking at our planet and its systems as living beings.
Can we view natural systems as beings with inalienable rights?
The landscape, creatures, and its integrated systems were once seen as sacred and alive, rather than the current world model of ownership and management. In many ways, nature's value has been reduced to monetary and utilitarian terms in how it serves and benefits humans.
How do we bear witness and show love for our planet even as many of its systems are dying—or at least changing beyond recognition, which certainly involves a staggering amount of loss and grief?
While acknowledging human-caused change, devastation, and extinction, how do we honor, celebrate, and fight for our planet? How do we love a broken being and rejoice in small victories in the face of such epic loss and uncertainty?
Submit your art and stories on the body of earth, our relationship to nature and its systems in all their glory and decay—our living planet.
Whitefish Review enjoys pushing boundaries and encourages broad interpretations of the theme.
*The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2019. (The deadline has shifted since Poets & Writers went to press.)
Author Rick Bass serves as the judge for Whitefish Review's annual fiction prize—"The Rick Bass/Montana Award for Fiction”.
First place winner of the fiction award will receive a $1,000 and be published in #24 to be released spring 2019. All submissions will be considered for publication, but only one story will be awarded the prize.
There is no theme restriction. Says Rick: "I'm so hungry for good stories, I will simply choose the best submission regardless of theme. That said, Shakespeare reported that all literature is about loss....so the odds are that the winning story will look at loss in some way. But who knows? Surprise me. What makes me smile when I read a good story? The basics. Beauty. Attentiveness. Crystalline specificity in an era of great uncertainty. The basics. Hold the adverbs.”
Rick Bass is the author of over thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent novel, All the Land to Hold Us, received France’s Prix Laure Bataillon for the best book translated to French, and his memoir, Why I Came West, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In March 2016, Little, Brown published For A Little While: New & Selected Stories. He is a founding board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council (www.yaakvalley.org), is writer in residence at Montana State University, and also teaches in the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program. He lives in Montana’s Yaak Valley. Bryan Woolley of the Dallas Morning News said, "Probably no American writer since Hemingway has written about man-in-nature more beautifully or powerfully than Rick Bass."
Submission Fee: $20
Submission Information
→ Prose should be typed double-spaced in 12-point Times font.
→ Submit one (1) previously unpublished story under 7000 words per entry.
***IMPORTANT***
1. Mac users, please be sure you save your file so the filename includes the ".pdf", ".doc", ".docx", or ".rtf" file extension.
2. PLEASE NAME YOUR DOCUMENT USING THIS STANDARD
→ File Naming Standard: "yourlastname_fiction_titleofwork.doc"
On pieces that we edit, authors will have the opportunity to approve all changes before publication.
New Montana Voices
An anthology of poems, fiction, essays, and photos for Montana High School students (grades 9 – 12) in public, private, home school, and non-traditional settings.
New Montana Voices is a contest and publishing venture directed at high school age writers and artists living in Montana. We are offering contest prizes for the top three entries in the following 3 categories: Poetry, Prose & Essay, and Photography. First place in each category is $300; second place is $150; third place is $50. In addition to that, New Montana Voices will compile the best of the entries at the end of the school year and publish the work in full-featured, paperback edition -- every author/photographer featured in the year-end magazine will be provided a free copy. Entrants may submit in multiple categories.
Entries will also be considered for publication in Whitefish Review. Inclusion in Whitefish Review would be in addition to inclusion in New Montana Voices.
The following guidelines for submission should be followed:
Poetry: No more than 6 poems per entrant, each a maximum length of 50 lines, in .docx, .doc, .rtf, or plain .txt format, using 12-pt Times New Roman font (except in .txt formatted submissions.)
Prose: No more than 4 entries per entrant, each a maximum of 3000 words, in .docx, .doc, .rtf, or plain .txt format, using 12-pt Times New Roman font with line spacing set to Double Space (except in .txt formatted submissions.)
Photography: No more than 5 photographs per entrant, each a maximum of 10 MB, in .jpg format.
