Also, The New Yorker is beginning to piss me off. People are already talking about the Summer fiction issue (June 14 & 21), but I still have not received the June 7 issue--it's now a week late--so I haven't reviewed the week's story yet. I don't want to read it online or print it out. That's why I have an over-priced subscription to the stupid magazine that really doesn't do anything for me. I might as well drop the subscription if I have to read the damn stories online anyway.
I told you I was cranky.
I found out this morning by reading the newsletter of WriterHouse that I was named a semi-finalist in the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize for my story collection/novel in stories What the Zhang Boys Know. Thanks a lot, Black Lawrence. I'm happy to have made it to the semi-finals, but what is it with contests not even informing the semi-finalists and finalists? The same thing happened with the Crazyhorse fiction contest recently. People started congratulating me for being a finalist and it was news to me. Note to contests: inform your finalists and semi-finalists before you post their names on your website. But on the Hudson Prize, here are the finalists and semi-finalists (which I'm posting because I can't link to the post on the Black Lawrence site since it's buried) (and note that Jacob Appel, the very talented and prolific story writer, entered at least four books in this contest because 2 are finalists and 2 are semi-finalists; congratulations, Jacob!):
Fiction Finalists
Andrew Milward- The Agriculture Hall of Fame
Annie Weatherwax- The Possibility of Things
Ira Sukrungruang- The Man with the Buddha Heads
Annie Dawid- Resurrection City: Stories of Jonestown
Brenda Goldberg- Amazing Grace
Geoff Schmidt- Out of Time
Jacob M. Appel- Scouting for the Reaper
Jacob M. Appel- Natural Selection: Stories
Nick Kocz- Disposable Baby and Other Stories
Xu Xi- Access- Thirteen Tales
Fiction Semi-FinalistsAndrew Milward- The Agriculture Hall of Fame
Annie Weatherwax- The Possibility of Things
Ira Sukrungruang- The Man with the Buddha Heads
Annie Dawid- Resurrection City: Stories of Jonestown
Brenda Goldberg- Amazing Grace
Geoff Schmidt- Out of Time
Jacob M. Appel- Scouting for the Reaper
Jacob M. Appel- Natural Selection: Stories
Nick Kocz- Disposable Baby and Other Stories
Xu Xi- Access- Thirteen Tales
Adam Prince- The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men
Clifford W Garstang- What the Zhang Boys Know
Jacob M. Appel- Choose Your Own Genetics: Stories
Jeremy Griffin- A Last Resort for Desperate People
Jacob M. Appel- Shell Game With Organs
Rebecca Lloyd- Don’t Drink the Water
Richard Sonnenmoser- Other Women
Tracy DeBrincat- Troglodyte
8 comments:
Congrats, Cliff.
I think at this point Appel should just release a book of collected stories as his debut.
Cliff, I had no idea you hadn't heard about the award! Glad WriterHouse could give you the good news. I was just following a link from the "Literary Rejections on Display" blog and your name popped off the page at me.--Rachel
@Ravi -- you mean combine these 4 books into one? Great idea.
@Rachel -- of course you had no idea, because the expectation is that people are informed of these things by the contests. But I'm grateful you included it or I might never have known. (It didn't turn up in Google alerts because for some reason they stuck my middle initial in there.)
Congratulation dear Cliff, but, being fair, The New Yorker is not stupid. It's just stupidly distributed.
Love to hear when good things come to writers and artists. Congrats again.
Cliff,
This lack of submitter notification appears to be standard practice. Crab Orchard guaranteed an issue with the reading fee and never delivered (2 years ago!).
No (serious) writer expects comments on contest manuscripts, but it is unprofessional to not have the administrative structure to at least notify applicants of decisions.
Congrats on being a semi-finalist.
@Anonymous: Yes, standard practice, as you say. Lots of places don't notify entrants of the results (unless they've asked for SASE). However, it is generally different--or at least I firmly believe it SHOULD be different--for finalists or anyone else whose names the magazine or publisher is going to post online in a list. "Dear A. Writer: The good news is you're a finalist in our contest. The bad news is you didn't win. Better luck next time. Sincerely, The Editors."
@At Anonymous 1:08 PM.
Stupid is as stupid does. Hahahaha. No, of course they're not stupid, but I STILL have not received the June 7 issue (or the June 14 issue).
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