Fiction submissions to resume in January
Shenandoah has announced its annual prize winners for 2016. The Volume 65 winner of the $1000 James Boatwright Poetry Prize is David Wojahn, who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University, for his poem “A Briefe Historie of the Noose in the Colonie of Virginia,” which appears in the Spring, 2016 issue (Number 2). The winners of the Carter Prize for the Essay and the Shenandoah Prize for Fiction are, respectively, Cynthia Lewis of Davidson, N.C. for her essay “Return Engagement: The Haunting of Hamlet and Dale Earnhardt, Jr.,” and Ron Riekki of Neguanee, Michigan for his story “Accidents” both from Volume 65, Number 1 (the fall 2015 issue).
Wojahn is the author of eight books of poems, including World Tree (Pittsburgh, 2011), and directs the Graduate Creative Writing Program at VCU. He has also received the Weinstein Poetry Prize, as well as the Yale Younger Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. His winning poem is a harrowing recount of hangings in the Commonwealth.
The Dana Professor of English at Davidson College, Lewis is the author of Particular Sinister: Shakespeare’s Four Antonios, Their Contexts and Their Plays and is at work on a collection related of essays, The Game’s Afoot: Sports and Shakespeare.
A novelist and short story writer raised in Michigan’s UP, Reikki has published several books, including the novels U. P. (Ghost Road Press) and The Way North (Wayne State University Press). His winning story is the harrowing monologue of a first responder on a particularly challenging night.
Shenandoah’s prizes are not the result of a traditional contest with a submission deadline but are chosen from among the work selected for publication in the journal during a volume year.
