Two of my favorite writing contests are wrapping up this October. You have until the first of the month to enter the Missouri Review’s Editors’ Prize Contest. $5,000 will be awarded to the best fiction, essay, and poetry. Meanwhile, you have until October 31st to enter DIAGRAM’s Essay Contest, which is open to all types of essays such as those “in an expansive sense, meaning essay as experiment, essay as heterogenous and sometimes strange or unruly beast.” That contest’s prize is $1,000 plus publication.
Writing Contests Galore
Tuesday New Release Day: Auster; Whitaker; Lobo; Appelfeld; Reve
New this week: 4321 by Paul Auster; The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker; Mr. Iyer Goes to War by Ryan Lobo; The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld; and The Evenings by Gerard Reve. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Time Traveling Stories
The Portable Story Series has announced their latest contest theme: time travel. Paul Levinson will be judging the contest, which runs from June 1st through July 29th.
The Kite and the String
"Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill." The Atlantic has an excellent contribution to the age-old thesis that creativity and madness are inextricably linked--and tied, moreover, to mental illness--based in part on a sample of students at Iowa Writer's Workshop. Pair with another essay on creativity and the "touch of madness" from our own archives.
Disturbing the Book Reviews
Over at The New York Times, our own Garth Risk Hallberg reviews A. M. Homes' May We Be Forgiven. And in October, so did we.
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The Perils of “Showrooming”
Emma Straub, whose Year in Reading piece ran this week, has written a great article on the perils of "showrooming."