JANET MITCHELL's short story collection THE LAST OF THIS DAY’S LIGHT has won the 5th Annual Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction!
JANET MITCHELL is the winner of the 2007-08 Starcherone Fiction Prize competition. MITCHELL's manuscript, THE LAST OF THIS DAY’S LIGHT, was selected by Final Judge Lance Olsen from Starcherone Books and publication in our 2008-09 season.
About the contest: Mitchell's manuscript was one of five finalists for the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, a blind-judged contest focusing on innovative fiction, now in its fifth year, which began with a pool of 190 entrants.
The other finalists, announced at the beginning of last month, can now be identified. Alphabetically, they were:
Jai Clare – Whore to Evolution
Affinity Konar – Abecedaria
Fred Muratori – Nothing in the Dark
Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk, or Mermalade
5 Honorable Mentions, listed alphabetically, have also been designated:
Ari Aster, Samuel Barthowe at Your Service
Sandra Jacobs, The Before Life
Nick Mamatas, Prying Open My Third Eye
Bryson Newhart, Fibonacci Time
Tom Whalen, The Straw That Broke
About The Winner, The Last of This Day’s Light:
The unassuming titles of stories in this collection (“The Father Story,” “The Carpentry Story,” “The School Story,” etc.) are misleading, because in each of these 16 beautiful stories Janet Mitchell displays a distinctive, exuberant, playful, and surreal talent for language that always feels fresh. The Last of This Day's Light is also wise and full of insights about families and childhood, small towns and prophets, life, and death. This is a debut and a talent to take seriously.
"These energizing, sparklingly imaginative, at times downright visionary stories – one, for instance, by a monkey bemoaning its aging elephant colleague at the circus; another about a woman who wants her mother stuffed and made pretty when she dies; others about mysterious metalogical creatures, a brutal college rape, a patricide – often form a necklace of deceptively childlike voices moving through an avant-gothic cosmos. But they are as much, if not more, about the beauties of surprising, rhythmic prose, as well, the syllabic stuff you can taste on the tongue. This book marks the advent of an exhilarating new voice and vision in the contemporary literary jungle." - Final Judge Lance Olsen, author of Anxious Pleasures, Girl Imagined by Chance,
and many others
About the Author:
In May 2005, JANET MITCHELL received her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was the Bingham Scholarship recipient in her second year. Her short stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Pomona Valley Review, and have been optioned by Lifetime Television as well as by independent producers.
Janet earned her Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from the University of Southern California, where she won the coveted John Huston Award for Best Director and a prestigious Paramount Pictures Fellowship. Her award-winning short film, "How Does Anyone Get Old?", starring Mark Ruffalo and Mina Badie, was featured on IFC's "Inside the Indies" and on NBC's "Starwatch." Her educational video, "Behind Closed Doors" won a Cine Golden Eagle and is currently being used in over 250 schools nationwide.
As a freelance writer, Janet has worked for such companies as E!, Paramount Classics and Delta Airlines.
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Finally...
Thank you to all our contestants -- this year's judging was very intense and difficult largely due to the superb quality of a great many of the manuscripts. We are very happy that all of you chose to participate. Your participation has set the bar for winning this contest very high and resulted in the Starcherone Fiction Prize having become one of the most successful and frequently imitated literary contests in the United States. You are all to be thanked – for your talents and your dreams.
We have no new contest planned.
We do not plan to have a contest in 2008-09. Please support our winning authors from previous years, who are among the most talented new writers in fiction today.
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2006-07 Contest Press
Release - August 15, 2006:
Zachary
Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey has won the 4th
Annual Starcherone Fiction Prize!
ZACHARY MASON is the
winner of the 2006 Starcherone Fiction Prize competition. Mason's
manuscript, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, was selected by Final
Judge Carole Maso. Mason will receive a $1000 advance from Starcherone
Books and publication in our 2007-08 season.
"Mason's book
is incredibly impressive. Beautifully written, intelligent,
war-inflected in all the most ancient and contemporary ways,
filled with all kinds of pleasures. An ambitious feast!" - Carole
Maso
About
the contest: Mason's manuscript was one of five finalists for
the Starcherone Fiction Prize, a blind-judged contest focusing
on innovative fiction, which began with a pool of 158 entrants.
Final Judge Carole Maso also designated a first runner-up: Johannes
Göransson - Dear Ra (a story in flinches)
The remaining finalists,
who round out the top five finishers in our contest, listed
alphabetically, were:
Arthur Binder
Guest
Lauren Schiffman - Some Days Like Superheroes: a povella
Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk, or Mermalade
15 Honorable Mentions,
also listed alphabetically, were also designated by our in-house
judges:
Kurt Jose Ayau
- At a Loss for Words
Cheryl Burket - The Dead Elvis Ball
Eugenia Chao - TaipeiNipple
Jai Clare - The Storyhouse
Jocelyn Cox Falling
Candice Favilla - Desperate Beans
Doran Larson Syzygy
Leslie Anne Leasure Heretic
Thomas Maltman - The Night Birds
Craig O'Hara - Missing Presumed Dead
Pat Rushin - Quantum Physics & My Dog Bob
Nicole Sabourin - The Ephemeralizing Device
Rosalind Stevenson - Insect Dreams
Steve Street - The Murther of Blick Mancoosh
Ed Tasca - Autobiography of a Worm
About
The Winner, The Lost Books of the Odyssey:
With brilliant
prose, a rich body of authorly knowledge, and a terrific imagination,
Zachary Mason has fashioned a book that might have been one
of the classics of world literature, if only it actually dated
from the time of Homer. The Lost Books of the Odyssey richly
carries off the illusion of being the lost ur-text of Homer's
masterpiece. Mason's talent as a writer also justifies comparisons
with the great postmodern fiction hoaxes of Borges, Nabokov,
and Robert Coover.
Zachary Mason bio:
Zachary Mason is a computer scientist specializing in artificial
intelligence. He got his B.S. at Harvey Mudd and his Ph.D. at
Brandeis. He works for a Silicon Valley start-up. In recent
months he has had short stories accepted by Pleiades and The
Journal of Literary Imagination. This is his first novel. He
is currently working on another novel about the mythology and
culture of AIs. Finally... Thank you to all our contestants
-- an especially deep pool made this year's judging one of the
hardest & most rewarding ever. The high quality of our entrants
has helped make the Starcherone Fiction Prize, after four years,
one of the most successful and imitated literary contests in
America. You are all to be thanked -- for your talents and your
dreams. Best wishes for placing your manuscripts soon -- and
a reminder: look out for the 5th Annual Starcherone Prize for
Innovative Fiction announcement after October 1, with a deadline
of January 31, 2007. The Final Judge will be novelist Lance
Olsen. See http://www.starcherone.com.
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2005-06 Contest Press
Release - August 2, 2005:
Sara Greenslit has won the 2005-06
Starcherone Fiction Prize for her novel, The Blue of Her
Body. Final Judge Brian Evenson selected the winner
from among ten finalists, which had in turn been culled from
177 entries to the contest. He also named the following three
meritorious runners-up:
Laura Sims - List
Tom Whalen - The Drive
Arthur Binder - Guest
The full lists of finalists and
honorable mentions included the following books, which are
not presented in any order within categories:
Finalists
Sarah Rosenthal - Manhatten
Karen Malpede - Since September
Pat Rushin - Quantum Physics and My Dog Bob
Diane Hammond - Lillian: Ninety One Years in the Twentieth
Century
Eckhard Gerdes - White Bungalows
Andrew Geyer - An Epistle of My Heart
Honorable Mentions
Louise Domaratius - Mariam's Wedding Gift
Laurie Fitzpatrick - The Alchemist's Daughter
Candice Favilla - Desperate Beans
John Domini - Tomb on the Periphery
Rick Henry - Postcards from Kittle
Ben Beard - 15 Deaths of Jeffrey Allen
Maile Chapman - Muscle Memory
Michael Cox - Leopold and Loeb
Catherine Kasper - Clerestory
Jennifer Spiegel - Love Slave
This is the initial announcement
of the results of our 2005-06 contest. Subsequent announcements
will provide more details about the winning manuscript and
Judge Brian Evenson's comments. The editors of Starcherone
Books would like to thank all entrants into our 2005-06 contest.
The next Starcherone Fiction Prize contest begins accepting
entries in October, 2005, and will have a deadline of January
31, 2006.
2005-06 Contest Press
Release - July 2005:
The finalists for the 2005-06 Starcherone Fiction
Prize are as follows. Only the titles are being released at
this point, in order to keep the "blind" in place
in our judging process:
Manhatten
The Drive
Since September
The Blue of her Body
Quantum Physics and My Dog Bob
List
Lillian: Ninety One Years in the Twentieth Century
White Bungalows
Guest
An Epistle of My Heart
The 177 manuscripts we received
proved a very strong field, yielding twice the usual number
of finalists, and Final Judge Brian Evenson has agreed to
take on the larger-than-usual group in making his selection.
Look for an announcement of the winner in August 2005.
Here are the Honorable Mentions,
also, for now, sans author-names:
Mariam's Wedding Gift
The Alchemist's Daughter
Desperate Beans
Tomb on the Periphery
Postcards from Kittle
15 Deaths of Jeffrey Allen
Muscle Memory
Leopold and Loeb
Clerestory
Love Slave
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Nina
Shope, Hangings: Three Novellas
Wins $1500 and publication
with Starcherone Books in our 2005 Season
2004-05
Contest Press Release - August 2004:
NINA
SHOPE is the winner of the 2004 Starcherone Fiction Prize.
Shope's manuscript, a collection of three novellas entitled
HANGINGS, was selected by Final Judge KENNETH BERNARD. SHOPE
will receive a $1500 advance from Starcherone Books and publication
in its 2005 season.
Shope's manuscript
was one of three finalists for the Starcherone Prize, a blind-judged
contest which began with a pool of 253 entrants. For the first
time ever, contestants were allowed the option to send their
manuscripts electronically. Approximately 40% of the entries
were submitted this way, including hangings.
The two other
finalists for the Prize were:
Andrew Geyer, An Epistle
of My Heart Thaddeus Rutkowski, Tetched
In addition,
Starcherone Books designated twelve books with Honorable Mentions
(listed alphabetically):
Elizabeth Block, A Gesture
Through Time
Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Afterlife: The
Suicide Stories
Sara Greenslit, The Blue of Her Body
Rick Henry, Sidewalk Portrait
Catherine Kasper, Telescopic Eyes
Carol Moldaw, The Widening
Scott Odom, Sex, Revenge, Insanity
Mukhta Sambani, Broomrider's Book of the Dead
Brian Seabolt, Otto
Judith Serin, Gravity
Mary L. Tabor, The Woman Who
Never Cooked
Ian Randall Wilson, Big Nose
Final judge Bernard
was glowing in his enthusiasm for Shope's three novellas.
"The first novella, Hangings -- a pubescent girl,
her dying mother and the story/myths that bring the one to
death and the other to life -- is an extraordinary tale of
intimacy, courage, and the frightening, transformative power
of art and imagination. The second, In Urbem, is a
difficult disquisition on the unfathomable city that lies
beneath our modern cities: dangerous, labyrinthine, feverish,
phantasmagoric -- a palimpsest of buried passions, the unspeakable,
the unimaginable -- all that disrupts and disturbs our cities
of order and light in the dark hours from the dark depths,
a cauldron we dare not recognize but cannot forget. The final
novella, Hagiographies, explores the intensities of
youth, the wildness and weirdness of sex, the incredible complexity
of words not spoken, letters never sent, lives received only
in fragment, and expectation, loneliness, misdirection, and
loss." Bernard called Shope "a writer of depth and
scope."
Nina Shope recently graduated
from the MFA program at Syracuse University. She has published
fiction in Open City, Third Bed, and Clerestory
Journal of Fine Arts. She has a BA in English with Honors
in Creative Writing from Brown University and was awarded
the Barbara Banks Brodsky Prize in 1998. She has also been
awarded a Jeremy Lake Memorial Fiction Prize from Syracuse
University and a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts.
2003-04
Contest Press Release - August 2003:
AIMEE
PARKISON, an Oklahoma native currently residing in Ithaca,
NY, is the winner of the 2003 Starcherone Fiction Prize. Parkison's
manuscript, a collection of stories entitled Van Windows,
was selected by Final Judge CRIS MAZZA. Parkison will receive
a $1500 advance from Starcherone Books and publication in
its 2004 season.
Parkison's stories
in Van Windows are atmospheric and dark, incorporating murder
motifs and dissociated voices and characters. Cris Mazza praised
the collection's "raw, loosely sewn, sinuous narratives
which surprise the reader frequently with astonishing climaxes
-- frequently a lack of climax where, in a different tradition,
there seemingly should have been one." "A keen eye
and ear for unique detail are at work here," said Mazza.
Van Windows was
one of five finalists for the Starcherone Prize, a blind-judged
contest which began with a pool of 110 entrants. The four
other finalists were:
Melissa Fraterrigo, The Sisters in the Glass House
Christopher Hartley, The Immovable Object
Catherine Kaspar, The Transcendental Eyeball
Brian Seabolt, Otto.
In addition,
Starcherone Books designated five books with Honorable Mentions:
David Axe, The Aquarist
Dawn Corrigan, The Way There and the Way Back
Geoff Schmidt, Out of Time: Stories
Maya Sonenberg, Voices from the Blue Hotel
John Strausbaugh, The Fragmentary Pilgrimmage . . .
Parkison is a
graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing at Cornell University
and recently also won a Writers at Work fellowship for her
story "Van Windows," which brings with it publication
in Quarterly West. Her work has also appeared in Other Voices,
Fiction International, Crab Orchard Review, American Literary
Review, River City, and Denver Quarterly. Starcherone Books
plans to bring out Parkisonıs book, her debut, in the late
Spring of 2004.
2003-04
Contest winner: 
