News
Contest Deadlines
Entries for the following contests will be accepted up until these dates.
- 2012 Editors' Awards - March 17, 2012
Visit the contest page for submission guidelines.
2011 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award Results
The results are in for the 2011 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award. The winner is "Rubia," by Patricia Grace King. She will receive $500, and the story will be published in a letterpress, hand-bound chapbook. Second place goes to "Foreign Service" by Julia Lichtblau, and third place to "The Geometry of Children." They will receive tuition at writers conferences and their work is under consideration for The Florida Review.
Notable Essays of 2010
The Best American Essays 2010 has named The Florida Review 35.1, our special issue on Native writing, a notable issue of 2010. In addition, they have listed an essay from TFR 35.2 "How to Leave Your Mother," by Billy Howell, as a notable essay for 2010.
2012 Florida Writers Conference
The Florida Review is pleased to announce our first annual conference, The Florida Writers Conference February 16-18 2012. The theme is Story Makes the World. Events include readings and workshops on beginning a writing career; creating a web presence for your writing, screenwriting, writing graphic narrative (comics), and more.
Featured writers are Anthony Swofford (Jarhead), NPR Correspondent Jacki Lyden (Daughter of the Queen of Sheba), National Book Award Winner Bob Shacochis (The Immaculate Invasion, Swimming in the Volcano), Robert Venditti (The Surrogates), and more. For more information and to register, click here.
The Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award
The Florida Review is proud to announce the first annual Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award in Fiction or Graphic Narrative in honor of the late Jeanne Leiby. Visit its contest page for more information and submission guidelines.
2011 Editors’ Awards Competition
The Florida Review is pleased to announce the winners and finalists in our 2011 Editors’ Awards Competition. Their work will appear in the Winter 2011 issue of The The Florida Review.
- Fiction Prize: Renato Escudero, “Barrio de mi Corazón”
- Fiction Finalist: Kyle Michel Sullivan, “Desert Land”
- Nonfiction Prize: Christopher Dickens, “Resurrections”
- Nonfiction Finalist: Tim Bascom, “Checkpoint”
- Poetry Prize: Laura Read, “The Goose Girl,” “‘A Woman Was Raped Here,’” and “For the Bible Tells Me So”
- Poetry Finalist: Timothy Geiger, “Animal Soul,” “Babicka,” and “Spells and Prayers”
2010 Editors’ Awards Competition
The Florida Review is pleased to announce the winners and finalists in our 2010 Editors’ Awards Competition. Their work will appear in the Winter 2010 issue of The The Florida Review.
- Fiction Prize: Gregg Cusick, “Clay Pigeons”
- Fiction Finalist: Belea T. Keeney, “Out of Joint”
- Nonfiction Prize: Barrie Jean Borich, “American Doll”
- Nonfiction Finalist: Ron Tanner, “Doodler”
- Poetry Prize: Michael White, “View of Delft”
The postmark deadline for the 2011 Editors' Awards Competition is February 28, 2011
Notable Essays of 2009
We are pleased to announce that the following two essays from our summer 2009 issue have been selected as Notable Essays of 2009 for The Best American Essays 2010:
- "The Dead Dog Essay," by Marcia Aldrich
- "Sick of Smart," by Patricia Foster
Karen Brown Receives O. Henry Award for "Isabel's Daughter."
Karen Brown was presented with the prestigious O. Henry Award for her short story "Isabel's Daughter" printed in the Spring 2007 (32.1) issue of The Florida Review. "Isabel's Daughter" will appear in the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 anthology.
New Pages Review
Review by: Sima Rabinowitz
In her entertaining and highly original Editors’ Note, Jocelyn Bartkevicius says at The Florida Review they’ve been "arguing over what counts as truth." If names in the Table of Contents don’t make you eager to read the journal (Maureen P. Stanton, Baron Wormser, Tony Hoagland, Denise Duhamel, Michel Burkard, an interview with Terese Svoboda), the editor’s creative consideration of what constitutes fact checking, whether or not authors get to define the genres of their work, and the meaning of "truth" in these post James Frey Debacle times (as the Review’s staff refers to them) surely will. Read more.
Review by Sima Rabinowitz
In her entertaining and highly original Editors’ Note, Jocelyn Bartkevicius says at The Florida Review they’ve been "arguing over what counts as truth." If names in the Table of Contents don’t make you eager to read the journal (Maureen P. Stanton, Baron Wormser, Tony Hoagland, Denise Duhamel, Michel Burkard, an interview with Terese Svoboda), the editor’s creative consideration of what constitutes fact checking, whether or not authors get to define the genres of their work, and the meaning of "truth" in these post James Frey Debacle times (as the Review’s staff refers to them) surely will.
Bartkevicius also contributes an interview with poet and fiction writer Terese Svoboda whose must read (and I mean this, it’s not-to-be-missed) book, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GI’s Secret from Postwar Japan, won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Bartkevicious is as good an interviewer as she is an editor, her questions are intelligent and provocative. She’s trying to find out what Svoboda knows, what she has to say, what she can learn from her. She’s not a fan gushing (like this reviewer!) or a novice writer wondering how she can replicate Svoboda’s success. And Svoboda is as good an interview subject as she is a writer.
Much of the truth-fact-fiction argument at the magazine revolved, apparently, around the magazine’s "graphic narrative" feature by Kelly Clancy, whose seven-page "comic strip" (my definition, not the editor’s) "Off the Bone" is, precisely, about "historical truth." Clancy does a tremendous job of demonstrating the graphic narrative’s potential for condensing a lot of complex material into a very economical framework, with shifting tones and attitudes. Clancy makes this look easy, a sure sign that it isn’t.
The magazine’s nonfiction is particularly strong this issue, with essays by Steven Harvey on end-of-life issues for two and four-legged animals; Tracy Seely’s "Monument Rocks," a "life geography" (my definition, not hers or the editor’s) in beautifully proportioned fragments; Maureen P. Stanton’s entertaining experience of the PBS favorite "Antiques Road Show"; and Baron Wormser’s rumination on the poetry of William Matthews.
This issue also includes the Editor’s Award winners: fiction by Julie Lekstrom Himes; nonfiction by Farnoosh Moshiri; and two poems by Maya Jewell Zeller. Alexis Levitin contributes translations from the Portuguese of poems by Rosa Alice Branco; and Mark Wisniewski, Kevin Allardice, Robin Kish, and Dawna Kemper contribute four stories, all with understated emotional truths.
Finally, if Denise Duhamel doesn’t make you glad for the inevitable blurring of lines between truth, fact, and fiction, nobody will; and as always, she’ll leave you breathless.
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