Today (December 9th), we mailed notices of selection to the finalists of the 2011 Graybeal-Gowen Prize! We’ll be posting more specifics on the finalists later; while the USPS delivers whether snow or rain or gloom of night, they are not so speedy as the internet, and it’s only fair the finalists be the first to know. Hopefully, the postman is quick and we can make a more detailed announcement very soon.
For those that don’t know, the Graybeal-Gowen Prize is an annual contest hosted by Shenandoah through the generous gift of Mr. James Graybeal W&L ’49 and his wife Mrs. Priscilla Gowen Graybeal. The contest focuses upon Virginian poets and poetry- entrants must either have been born in Virginia or have established Virginia residency. In 2011, Shenandoah was very pleased to have received approximately 300 submissions. While submissions for the 2011 prize have closed, there’s always 2012! If you’re a Virginia poet, think of it as ten months to prepare a great poem for us to consider! For full details on the Graybeal-Gowen Prize, please visit the prize’s page here.
The contests don’t stop with the Graybeal-Gowen, either. Shenandoah is also preparing to announce the 2011 winners of our annual prizes in Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry. We have just a little more to do, and hope to have the announcement available soon. These awards are selected from work published in Shenandoah in the last year. More information on these awards can be found on our prizes page.
For any reviewers out there, Shenandoah will be inaugurating an annual prize for reviews in 2012. The prize will operate in the same fashion as the previously mentioned ones for Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry, i.e., selected from material published in Shenandoah. The current issue of Shenandoah contains five reviews; to see the sort of piece we’re looking to publish (and therefore considering for the prize), please visit the current issue.
Happy Holidays!
In light of yesterday, I thought a post honoring some of my favorite tricksters in literature couldn’t be more appropriate. At an early age, my parents would rock me to sleep with tales of Brer Rabbit and Puss and Boots. In middle school, I first met Shakespeare’s Puck, whose clever schemes single-handedly convinced me that the playwright wasn’t as boring as he seemed. Last year, I was surprised to encounter these folk in my course on Medieval Literature. As we read Sir Tomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, it seemed like almost every quest contained at least one disguised knight. None of these examples, however, compares to the tricks conjured up by Twain in Huck Finn (at least for me). The Duke and the King’s cons, among others, will forever make the novel synonymous with trickery.