Contest Winners ANNOUNCED [500 for 500: Flash-Prose Contest]

We received over 200 submissions to the 500 for 500: Flash-Prose Contest this spring. We were overwhelmed by the level of quality and creativity in these small stories, prose-poems, and "others." Thank you so much to everyone who shared their work.

Unfortunately, we could only choose three.

Our judge Catherine Zobal Dent commented on the abundance of talent in the submissions. In the end, she chose these three winners... >drumroll<

Contest winner: 

Jeanne Wagner with "Self-Portrait as a Supermarket Bouquet" 

Honorable Mentions: 

Amy Rossi with "If You Need Me, I Will Be Over Here Listening to 'Slide It In' on Repeat"

Dinah Cox with "Bun in the Oven"

Congratulations to Jeanne, Amy, and Dinah. We were so impressed with these three writers, and we can't wait to share their work with you. 

You can read Jeanne Wagner's flash-prose piece in issue 55 of Hayden's Ferry Review, which will be released in December. Amy Rossi and Dinah Cox will be featured in The Dock later this fall.

"500 for 500" Flash-Prose Contest Extension - May 23rd

In the whirl of finals week and last-minute vacation preparations, did you forget to submit to Hayden’s Ferry Review’s “500 for 500” Flash-Prose Contest? Well, no worries, because we are extending our deadline! We will be accepting submissions for one more week; on May 23^rd, we’ll be closing submissions for good.

The contest winner, chosen by author Catherine Zobal Dent, will receive a $500 prize, as well as publication in issue 55. Two runner-ups will also receive monetary prizes. So send us your best 500 words!

Find more details on the contest here!

Oyster Shells, Broken Bones, and Snow-Houses: A Conversation with Catherine Zobal Dent

In a week we'll be closing our "500 for 500" Flash-Prose contest. We're so excited to have Catherine Zobal Dent, author of Unfinished Stories of Girls, judging the contest.

I first met Catherine five years ago. I was an undergraduate writing major at Susuquehanna University, and Catherine and her partner, Silas, were applying for an Associate Professor position at the SU Writers Institute. To no one's surprise, they got the job. Over the following years, I was fortunate enough to know Catherine first as a professor, and then as an adviser, writing mentor, author, and friend.

Catherine lives a life full of small, daily joys: fresh milk from a nearby farm, a storied and maze-like house that sits next to a graveyard, water balloon fights with her children, a garden that comes to life every spring, and the list goes on.

The stories in Catherine's collection are dark, honest, and magical. Like Catherine, they are full of joys and small, but important, wonders. I am honored to share this conversation on Catherine's work with you.

Dana:   What does it mean to be unfinished?

Catherine:   One American myth that I believed in for way too long involves a finish line.  We race toward it, and the first person to get there is the winner, and the last person—well, good job, you, as long as you finish!  I was pretty competitive when I was a kid.  I played each sport until the end of the season; studied test questions until I knew I had the right answer; stayed in church up to the final note of the recessional; and read novels each night until the flashlight batteries died.  To leave something unfinished was anathema.  I graduated, and I graduated again, and in my early twenties, I happened to start a meditation practice called Vipassana.  The point was to observe the behavior of my breath, my thoughts, nothing more, in order to learn how to live in the moment.  I am embarrassed to admit that, even in this mindful context, I still thought the goal was to finish—to sit the full hours until the last seconds.  I meditated while headaches drilled into my skull like gravediggers hitting rock.  This pain was my ego, I thought.  If I could only sit it out…sit…shit…ouch…and so it was not until I set out long-distance hiking that I began to understand something deeper about being finished or unfinished.  When you’re walking every day and loving it, part of you wants to finish, to make camp that night, to reach the next town or the next mail drop, to have at last walked 2,181 miles from Georgia to reach Maine to summit Mount Katahdin.  Another equally strong part wants to stay on the trail, keeping up a newfound communion with wind and muscles and rain and trees.  Yet the end looms.  It’s inevitable if you keep walking.  When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I was 24, and the luckiest thing possible happened to me when, five days from Mt. Katahdin, I fell and broke my arm.  I never “finished.”  Oh, this story wasn’t the one I wanted!  Living with it, I’ve learned how to tell it, reshape it, and tell it differently, and one realization I’ve gained from that experience is that stories are never finished.  There is a lot of energy inherent to being unfinished.  One of my projects in this book is to investigate the properties of unfinished-ness.

I started to read and write seriously after I got off the trail, which is when I discovered that a good many people had the same project.  I discovered John Barth, who grew up in the same town as my grandmother: Cambridge, Maryland.  His story, “Dunyazadiad” from Chimera, introduced me to a fiction writer, dressed as a genie, who says: “There’s a kind of snail in the Maryland marshes—perhaps I invented him—that makes his shell as he goes along out of whatever he comes across, cementing it with his own juices, and at the same time makes his path instinctively toward the best available material for his shell; he carries his history on his back, living in it, adding new and larger spirals to it from the present as he grows.”  The genie meets Scheherazade and her sister, Dunyazade, through a simultaneous realization that “the key to the treasure is the treasure.”  When I first read this book, I felt that these words would circle around in my brain forever.  And they have.  Now that I’m publishing these stories, I will give them over to others to circle through with the hopes that the stories never reach a finish line. 

So, to wrap up this longish answer: unfinished is a state of mind that I’ve been working toward for a long time.  Unfinished is also a trellis my partner and I plan to build in our backyard for yellow roses to climb on.  And it’s a series of stepping stones through the grass, and a honeybee hive, and a chicken coop.  Ironically, being unfinished is something we can’t avoid during our lives.  There’s the naming of it that seems important, and that’s what I’m writing my way through, this idea that our work is to reimagine and retell. 

Dana:     Setting plays a huge role in this collection. The stories are full of oyster shells and marshes and whorls of water. How have the settings of your life influenced this book? What is the importance of setting in story?

Catherine:    My decision to set all the stories on the Eastern Shore of Maryland had something to do with an idea that our childhood and young adult years occupy a near-mythical territory in our minds.  My first lessons about identity, and sexism, and racism, and class bias, and homophobia, and depression, and loneliness, and love, and death, all things I find myself writing stories about, were learned in Talbot, Dorchester, and Caroline counties.  I love Elizabeth Bowen’s curious observation: “Nothing can happen nowhere,” but I’m ambivalent about how she continues: “The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.”  Unlike what I think Bowen is suggesting, I don’t believe that regional characteristics give rise to people’s specific problems.  Similar stories exist everywhere, in all locales.  Setting allows me and hopefully my readers to work out the imaginative significance, or meanings, of a story.  The texture of a place, and its language, supports its characters—like human beings, whose existential problems, I believe, are the same no matter where we live.  I grew up around oyster shells, and I know how they cut when you walk barefoot on them, and how they crunch under bicycle tires, and how they smell like salt and dying sea creatures when they are freshly dumped.  However, what I love to consider, just as much as how oyster shells shaped me or my characters or my happenings, is the line, “a long oystershell lane.”  The phrase provides me with a jumping-off point, a way to enter a story, as I think all good setting details do.  So, I believe that the setting gives us language on which and with which to build. 

Dana:      There is such magic in these stories – such childlike curiosity and wonder. It makes me wonder: Has being a mother affected the life of your stories, and if so, how?

Catherine:   Ah!  Ha!  Thank you!  I should say yes, for certainly, there is much magic in my life now that I am around two children all the time, from rediscovering Outside Over There to making shrinking potions to finding snow-houses traced out on the backyard by my son and daughter.  Yet I have always been a devotee of magic and wonder.  When I was a kid, I believed, or worked hard to believe, that fairies left presents for me to find out in the fields and woods.  Clumps of tiger lilies.  Honeysuckle and raspberries.  Arrowheads and Indian pottery.  Being raised Catholic, magic and immanence went hand in hand. 
Many of these stories were written pre-motherhood.  In “Flesh Ring,” the story within the story that is subtitled “Mother” was my attempt to imagine the interior life of a brand-new mother based on a sculpture by Ron Mueck.  I wrote this Mother long before I was anywhere near ready to be a parent, but like many of Ann Piper’s paintings that accompany the stories in Unfinished Stories of Girls, my stories are palimpsests resting atop earlier versions of themselves.  I’m a late bloomer, and a slow writer.  Your question is really interesting because the writing of my stories has been extended over a decade of learning how to write.  Pieces that emerged at the beginning of my writing career, such as “Lost Queens” and “The Hole in Backyard Park,” have undergone many revisions, even since they were first published.  I’m sure that some of these revisions were affected by the realization that one day, if I’m lucky, my children will be interested in reading them.  This thought put on some additional pressure to be honest, which I find, whether in art or in life, to be wondrous and compelling.

Dana:      How do you see art and text to be in conversation in this book?

Catherine:   When I first saw on Ann Piper’s work, I felt two things: awe and fear.  Ann was doing things visually that laid bare some deep emotions, often the darker emotions.  There is an exhilaration in her work that matches the way I sometimes feel drunk with language, and there’s absurdity, and the sublime.  When we started this project, Ann read my manuscript, and I pored over her canvases.  The conversations in the book emerged from hours of face-to-face conversation over BJ’s oysters and white wine in which we made connections that startled us.  For example, I selected the painting to be paired with the story “Lost Queens” with no idea that Ann’s title for the painting is “Queen of Maybe.”  Ghostly synchronicity!  Another example of this is how the painting that is now in conversation with the story “Half Life” is a detail from an enormous canvas featuring a woman with a blackened eye.  The detail reminded me of the brokenness of my character Amber’s life, and the way she misses mundane things from her life outside jail.  I knew the painting’s larger context, but I did not recognize until Ann told me that the arrangement of tea cups and saucers approximates a human face with a black eye, which is what the character Fran claims to see under the surface of Amber’s photographs.  Amber keeps her photographs under her bed.  In a good conversation, each participant comes away with a more complicated, more richly textured understanding of something.  Ann and I believe that the paintings reveal layers of meaning inside the stories, and the stories illuminate narratives within the paintings.  


Dana:      If you could travel back in time and give advice to yourself as a student-writer, what would you say?

Catherine:   If you love writing, young Catherine, take it more seriously.  Commit to it sooner.  Know that failing is part of the process, and have faith in your own hard work.  Listen to people who know more about writing than you do, but know that your goal is not to write like they do.  Your goal is to write the books that you wish to exist in the world.  Work your wishes into existence.  (Try saying that three times fast.)

Dana:      Another hypothetical: If you could take a year off from your responsibilities, what would you do? Where would you go?

Catherine:   Which responsibilities?  Teaching and working at the university?  Developing FUSE?  Learning how to rebuild the windows and porches on our old house?  Gardening?  Caring for our ancient cats and the chickens and bees we hope to get?  Would someone else help Silas to parent the kids?  I don’t know…this doesn’t seem like such a good idea.  But if we are talking only of responsibilities for which I get paid by the university, and finances are not an issue, I’d take Silas and Emerson and Lake to live in an apartment in a big, art-filled city.  Beijing, maybe.  Or let’s say Rome.  The children would go to school, learn Chinese.  Or Italian.  Silas and I would write four hours each day and spend the rest of our time walking, reading many books, listening to music.  This is one kind of dream I have.

Dana:      What’s next for you? Are there any projects you’re currently working on?

Catherine:   I’m in the middle of several long projects, including two collaborations.  First, with my friend Ann Lockhart, a family practice doctor in Martinez, California and also a mother of two, I’m writing a memoir about friendship and long distance hiking.  It’s composed in two voices and features multi-media texts, and our working title is Falling: A Book of the Appalachian Trail, Polyester, and the American Dream.  In 2016, Ann Lockhart and I plan to hike from the Hundred-Mile Wilderness of Maine up to Mount Katahdin.  Second, with my friend and Susquehanna colleague Lynn Palermo, I’m working on a translation of stories by the French writer Cyrille Fleischman.  My final project is the revision of my novel Jubilee, a contemporary retelling of the Biblical story of Dina that I’m wishing into existence.  There is another project I’m excited about, a second collaboration with Ann Piper, so new that we can’t talk about it yet!  It has to do with unfinishing the world.

**
Catherine Zobal Dent was born in Washington, D.C., and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Unfinished Stories of Girls (Fomite, 2014) is her debut short story collection. She teaches creative writing at the Writers Institute of Susquehanna University.

Dana Diehl is a second year MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She serves as editor of Hayden's Ferry Review.

HFR Flash Prose Contest!--Deadline May 15, 2014

We are now accepting entries for the 2014 Hayden’s Ferry Review

“500 for 500”

Flash-Prose Contest

Deadline: May 15^th, 2014

Judge: Catherine Zobal Dent

Prizes: $500 and Publication

Hayden’s Ferry Review is now accepting entries for the 2014 Hayden’s Ferry Review Flash-Prose contest. The contest awards $500 and publication in Hayden’s Ferry Review Issue 55 to the winner. Two honorable mentions will receive $250 and publication on the Hayden’s Ferry Review blog. All entries will be considered for publication.

Contest fees:

We’re all poor writers (even more so since the AWP conference in Seattle), so this year we are giving you two contest fee options:

•       For $10, you will be entered into the contest and, if you are not a prize-winner, our regular submission queue.
•       For $20, you will be entered into the contest and our regular submission queue, but ALSO, you will receive a year-long subscription to Hayden’s Ferry Review. Subscription fees are regularly priced at $25/year.

Contest Guidelines:

•       Submit online via our submission manager.
•       All entries must be 500 words or under.
•       All entries must fit under the category of “prose” (including, but not limited to, fiction, nonfiction essay, memoir, prose poems, and hybrid work).
•    Each submission may consist of up to two (2) flash-prose entries per person. Entries should be submitted as a single document.
•       In your cover letter, let us know if your entry is fiction, nonfiction, neither or both!
•       All entries will be read blindly, so only include your name and contact information in the cover letter.
•       Submit your work as a single .doc, .docx., .rtf, or .pdf file.
•       Only previously unpublished work will be considered.

Our judge, Catherine Dent:

Catherine Dent’s first book of short stories, Unfinished Stories for Girls, will be published by Fomite Press in May 2014. Her short fiction has appeared in literary journals such as the Harvard Review, North American Review and PANK, and she won the Charles Johnson Award for Student Fiction while finishing her Ph.D. at Binghamton University in 2006.  Current writing projects include Jubilee, a novel, and Polyester, a creative nonfiction book about through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. A speaker of French and Italian, Dent is also collaborating on a translation of works by the French short story writer Cyrille Fleischman. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.

Desert Nights, Rising Stars Conference Winner!

Drum roll, please! The winner of the 2013 Desert Nights, Rising Stars conference giveaway is...

          Vicky Jeter!

Congratulations, Vicky! Please contact us as hfr@asu.edu for details on attending the conference.

We want to thank each of you who entered to win a place in at this year's conference. Your interest in the conference has been amazing, and while there was only one winner for this contest, we still hope to see you at DNRS!

Thanks again to all who entered!

Desert Nights, Rising Stars Conference Contest!

It's almost that time again, when we gather fellow writers for some quality time in the warmth of the Tempe sun. That's right—the Desert Nights, Rising Stars conference is coming up! Last year we held our first-ever event contest, where the winner received entry to the entire conference. We had so much fun hanging out with last year's winner, Shawnte Orion, that we're doing it again! So here's the deal.
Now through January 25th, we’re opening a contest to win entry to our annual Desert Nights, Rising Stars (DNRS) conference. The winner will receive entry to the conference—valued at $375—which includes readings, receptions, book signings and sales, lectures, and plenty of opportunity to meet and mingle with fellow writers and attendees. This year's conference welcomes Barbara Peters, Tom Leveen, and Jewell Parker Rhodes (and so many more), so you don't want to miss it!

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To enter, retweet our DNRS tweets, share our DNRS posts on Facebook, and comment on this post. Each of those options counts as an entry, so you can enter a maximum of 3 times. Good luck!

What:  Win entry to Desert Nights, Rising Stars conference, held Feb. 22–24, 2013 

When:  Enter now through midnight, Jan. 25 

How:  Retweet, share, and comment on this post to win. On Facebook, be sure to share our original post so we can track your entry! And, when commenting, please leave a name (it doesn't have to be your real name, but it's unlikely we'll be able to tell one anonymous from the other).

The winner will be chosen at random and results will be posted here, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Please note that this giveaway does not include airfare or lodging. But if you haven't been to Arizona in February, you can absolutely count this as a vacation.

Pushcart Prize Nominations 2012

We are pleased to announce our Pushcart Prize nominations for 2012! We’re not exaggerating when we say we wish we could nominate all our contributors. A lot of tough decisions had to be made, because there was so much wonderful work to select from in issues #50 and the forthcoming #51. Below are the staff’s final selections. Winners of the Pushcart Prize are announced in April.

HFR PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATIONS 2012:

“The Funfair” written and translated by Elena Alexieva (#51)

“The Painter of Dreams” written by Tony Duvert, translated by S.C. Delaney and Agnès Potier (#50)

“Eden Underwater” by Judith Edelman (#51)

“So Happy” by Victoria Lancelotta (#50)

“Enkidu” by Nichita Stănescu, translated by Sean Cotter #(51)

“The Study Heads” by Emilia Phillips (#51)

We hope this will encourage you to return to issue #50 for some holiday reading, and we can’t wait to release issue #51 so you can lay your hands on these wonderful pieces!

SPOOKY LIMERICK CONTEST WINNERS

We are pleased to bring you the winners of our Spooky Limerick Contest! Our grand prize winner receives a year-long subscription to HFR, and the runners-up get a free copy of issue 51, our In the Dark edition!

Our grand prize winner is Jennine Scarboro with “Gorgon's Coiffure.”
 We loved this funny and surprising take on Medusa.

Medusa bought a platinum wig;
she curled and sprayed it up, big.
Sometimes though a snake,

would wriggle and shake
the blonde locks around in a jig.

And a big congrats to our other winners (in no particular order), found below!

“It Happens” by Cathy Bryant!

There was an intelligent ghoul
who topped all her classes at school.
She memorised books
on spooks, rooks and cooks
But fell for the dumb April fool.

“The house on Bram Hill...” by C Wallace Walker!

The house on Bram Hill did tempt me

For years the old manse had stood empty

‘Til one moonless night

I crept bravely inside
Unawares down my leg I did pee.

And the epic 3-part “Orkin Electronic Mouse Trap” by Patsy Helmetag!

The batt’ry had long since run dead

In the trap ‘neath the mistress’ bed.
But a mouse had been zapped,

All its synapses snapped,

And some flies had devoured its head.
 
What the dame didn’t know was those flies

Laid their eggs in its flesh when it died.
And the maggots that fested in

The rodent’s intestines
Shed their cases. Disgusting—no lie.
When another was seen by the cat
The mistress had quite ‘nuf of that.

She retrieved the devise

Fainting dead. Cold as ice

At the carcass, a shriveled hazmat.

Halloween Limerick Contest!

Photo by: Luz Adriana Villa A.

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Happy Halloween, HFR hobgoblins! It's time for plenty of tricks and treats, and we've got a few planned for you! As part of this year's trickery, we're giving away four issues of spooky In the Dark-themed Issue 51, and one grand prize of a one-year subscription! 

To enter to win, submit your spookiest limerick by sharing on our Facebook wall, by submitting one here in the comments, or by posting to your own blog/website and sending us a link via Facebook, Twitter, or here in the comments. We're accepting only one entry per person, so craft your limerick carefully!

All entries must be received by 11:59 PM on Nov. 7, and winners will be announced shortly after.

Good luck, and happy limericking!

UPDATE: We are extending the contest deadline to 11:59 PM Friday, Nov. 9. Thank you!

25th Anniversary Giveaway Winners

Big congratulations going out to the winners of our anniversary giveaway: Megan Paonessa and Emily J. Lawrence. Thank you for joining in our celebration! We invited submissions of photographs of a significant artifact and an accompanying anecdote—true or untrue. Below are the entries that won these two amazing ladies a copy of Issue 50.

"The baby that didn't make it." – Megan Paonessa

"These flecks on my fiance's face are dried seahorses he fetched me from the Atlantic brim. The seahorses are an allusion to a story I had written at the time he whisked off to Hilton Head. They mean "you were not invited but we are not far from each other." Artifacts ferrying adoration across 4 united states of separation, with a smell of sandy mayonnaise." – Emily J. Lawrence





Thank you again for helping us celebrate, and we hope you enjoy your copies of the anniversary issue!

25th Anniversary Celebration and Giveaway!

Silver might be the traditional gift for 25th anniversaries, but we like paper too much to care. Toss that tradition out the window! That's why, in celebration of our 50th issue, we're giving the gift of paper. More precisely, we're giving away five copies of HFR's 25th anniversary issue. If you're not excited yet, you should be, because this is a thick issue, filled with hand-selected writing and artwork based on the concept of the artifact.

To enter to win a copy of Issue 50, submit a photo of an important artifact in your life, and share the item's story. We're accepting one entry per person, so choose carefully! Submit by sharing on our Facebook wall, submitting through Twitter and tagging #HFR50, or posting on your own site and sending us the link through Facebook or Twitter.

HFR's managing editor, Beth, will select the winning entries this Friday, and winners will be announced on Monday, May 21. 

Good luck to you!

A Very Happy New Year: Enter to Win!

I hope you know: we thought a lot about you over the break. Yes, you. As one of our subscribers, contributors, submitters, blog readers, friends, you give us many of things. So we want to give you something, too. Fun. Excitement. Opportunity.

So. Now through Saturday, Jan. 7, we’re opening a contest to win entry to our annual Desert Nights, Rising Stars (DNRS) conference. The winner will receive entry to the conference—a $375 value—which includes readings, receptions, book signings and sales, lectures, and plenty of opportunity to meet and mingle with fellow writers and attendees. This year's conference features the likes of Robert Boswell, Carolyn Forché, Pam Houston, Adam Johnson, Denise Duhamel (and so many more),  so you don't want to miss it!

To enter, retweet our DNRS tweets, share our DNRS posts on Facebook, and comment on this post. Each of those options counts as an entry, so you can enter a maximum of 3 times. Read on, and good luck!

What:  Win entry to Desert Nights, Rising Stars conference, held Feb. 23–26, 2012 

When:  Enter now through Saturday, Jan. 7 

How:  Retweet, share, and comment on this post to win. On Facebook, be sure to share our original post so we can track your entry! And, when commenting, please leave a name (it doesn't have to be your real name, but it's unlikely we'll be able to tell one anonymous from the other).

Winners will be chosen at random and results will be posted Monday, Jan. 9, 2012 here, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Please note that this giveaway does not include airfare or lodging. But if you haven't been to Arizona in February, you can absolutely count this as a vacation.

Unusual Call for Submissions

The Tidal Basin Review is calling for submissions regarding the Prison Industrial Complex and the Death Penalty. Deadline is December 31, 2011. Details here.

Silver Boomer Books seeks submissions for an anthology on the widowhood experience. They are interested in all aspects of widowhood-grief, memories, glitches, triumphs. Either prose or poetry is acceptable. You can even send a 6-word memoir if you like. Submissions will be read between December 1, 2011 and January 31, 2012. Submission guidelines can be found here. (You have to scroll to the very bottom of the page).

The Indian River Review is currently soliciting submissions for its inaugural issue slated for publication in late spring 2012. The theme for this issue is “Time and Place.” The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2012. Genres include short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, critical essays, black and white photography, and book reviews. Submission guidelines here.

CavanKerry Press will be having an open submission period from January 1-31, 2012 for its Laurel Books imprint. Details here.

Selected Shorts is having a writing contest. The 2012 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize with guest judge Maile Meloy. Story requirements: Submit a single short story that centers around a single object or addresses the theme "Objects of Desire." If objects could talk, what stories would they tell? Every object tells a story. Deadline is March 2, 2012. Details here.

The Winning Photos Are...

We asked you to send us photos to go along with the story "Goodbye, My Chickens, Goodbye" by Anne Earney, and you answered. The winning photos are below. But we need more! Send us photos, music, and ideas! See here for submission details. The best photos will be turned into a loving montage for the story and displayed on YouTube, and if your photo makes the cut (chances are pretty good), you get a free copy of issue #49!

Unusual Call for Submissions

OccuPoetry is seeking poetry about economic justice/injustice, greed, protest, activism, and opportunity. Submissions need not be limited to Wall Street's greed nor US-based poets; we consider the Occupy Movement a world-wide movement for a more just world. OccuPoetry accepts formal and free-verse, mail art, and collage poetry. Details and submission guidelines here.

"Imitation is the highest form of flattery." The online literary magazine qarrtsiluni, now in its 7th year of operation, has just issued a call for submissions to an imitation-themed issue. The deadline is November 30. Details here.

Writer Advice's latest submission opportunity regards a moment in time that altered your world forever. Share 50 to 500 words of prose or up to 24 lines of poetry. It can be as small as picking up the telephone or as big as a hurricane. It can be as global as the impact of 9-11 or as personal as the discovery that your perfect baby has a chronic disease. It can be the start or end of a job or the time you responded to a Craigslist ad and found love. What moment altered your world forever? Submit to Lgood67334@comcast.net. DUE: December 10, 2011.

A unique opportunity brought to you by Unstuck's premiere release! To celebrate the upcoming release of the first issue, they're holding a fee-free contest with some unusual prizes. This is a micro-lit contest (miniature stories, miniature essays, and poems). Entry fee: $0, natch, although the contest is OPEN ONLY TO THEIR TWITTER FOLLOWERS. Link to UnstuckMag's twitter here. Last day entries will be accepted: December 31, 2011. Details here.

Each month SWITCHBACK provides a prompt and asks writers to send their best work inspired by that prompt. The winning entry as decided by their editors is then featured on SWITCHBACK. The November prompt is: "Nobody ever knows anything for a fact." Details here.

Photo Contest!

Hello All!

You may remember our plea from a few weeks back asking for photos for our next HFR video project. We've decided to hold a photo contest! Those whose photos are chosen for the video will receive a copy of the new HFR #49!!

For this video project, we've decided on "Goodbye, My Chickens, Goodbye" by Anne Earney, in HFR #48. Here's the deal. Send us any photograph that you feel relates to the story. Anything at all! We'll choose our favorites and string them together for a fabulous video worthy of killing a radio star. We'll gladly accept your photos through email (hfr@asu.edu). Be sure to include your name and address. The deadline is NOVEMBER 30th!