Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry Competition: Cutbank

CutBank is proud to announce our call for submissions to our annual Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Non-Fiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry!

Submissions have already begun, but the contests run through Feb 29, 2012. Winners receive $500 and publication in CutBank 77. All submissions will be considered for publication in CutBank. The contests' $17 entry fee includes a one-year, two-issue subscription to CutBank, beginning with the prize issue, CutBank 77.

Please send only your best work. With all three of these awards, we are seeking to highlight work that showcases an authentic voice, a boldness of form, and a rejection of functional fixedness. For more information, guidelines, and to apply, visit our website.

Our judges this year are the following:

Montana Prize in Fiction: Benjamin Percy
Montana Prize in Creative Non-Fiction: Eula Biss
Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry: Bhanu Kapil

Judges' bios as follows!

2012 Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry

Montana Prize in Fiction Judge – Benjamin Percy

Ben teaches in the MFA program at Iowa State University and at the Low-Res MFA program at Pacific University. He has also taught as guest faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and regularly lectures at conferences and universities around the country. He is the author of two novels, Red Moon (forthcoming from Grand Central / Hachette in 2012), The Wilding (Graywolf, 2010), and two books of short stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, GQ, Men's Journal, Outside, Paris Review, Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. When he isn't hunched over the keyboard, hammering out stories, Ben enjoys hiking, canoeing, fishing, skiing, and throwing back a few pints with friends and family. He lives in Ames, Iowa, with his wife and two children.

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction Judge – Eula Biss

Eula Biss holds a BA in nonfiction writing from Hampshire College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her second book, Notes from No Man's Land, received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Her work has also been recognized by a Pushcart Prize, a Jaffe Writers' Award, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. She teaches writing at Northwestern University and is working on a new book about myth and metaphor in medicine with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Howard Foundation Fellowship. Her essays have recently appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best Creative Nonfiction and the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Nonfiction as well as in The Believer, Gulf Coast, Columbia, Ninth Letter, the North American Review, the Bellingham Review, the Seneca Review, and Harper's.

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry Judge – Bhanu Kapil

Bhanu Kapil lives in Colorado where she teaches writing and thinking at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, as well as Goddard College’s low-residency MFA. She has written four full-length cross-genre works--The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), and Schizophrene (forthcoming, Nightboat Books).