Posts Categorized: Blue Light Books

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Interview with Ross Gay, 2017 Blue Light Books Prize Judge

We are proud to have Indiana University Director of Creative Writing and long-time supporter of Indiana Review Ross Gay judge the 2017 IR/IU Press Blue Light Books Prize. While preparing your poetry manuscripts, read his interview where he discusses when he knows a poem is finished, writing as conversation, love, and what he might be looking for in the winning poetry collection.

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Ross Gay is the author of three books: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashedrossgay1 Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is currently a nominee for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Catalog was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry, the Ohioana Book Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

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IR Staff Tells All: Poetry Collections We’re Thankful For

IR is proud to be partnering again with IU Press to award our second annual Blue Light Books Prize, this time to an outstanding poetry collection! Submissions open December 1, 2016. Check out our guidelines for more details.

In preparation for Blue Light Books submissions, IR staff and MFA students in the Indiana University Creative Writing Program reflected on the poetry collections they’re most thankful for this holiday season. Think of these collections as our blue lights through clouded times.

Be sure to check out our Blue Light Books Prize tableau on our Instagram page.

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Announcing the 2016 Blue Light Books Prize Winner!

We are proud to announce that judge Michael Martone has selected Andrea Lewis’s short story collection WHAT MY LAST MAN DID as the winner of the IR/IU Press 2016 Blue Light Books Prize! We received many excellent short story collections and the competition was fierce. Thank you to everyone who submitted their work for consideration and made this year’s Blue Light Books Prize possible. WHAT MY LAST MAN DID will be published by IU Press in Spring 2017.

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IR Staff Tells All: Short Story Collections We’re Thankful For!

This year IR is excited to partner with IU Press to award our first annual Blue Light Book Prize to an outstanding short story collection! Submissions open December 1, 2015. Check out our guidelines for more details.

In preparation for Blue Light Book submissions, our senior IR staff reflected on the short story collections they’re most thankful for this holiday season. Read more…

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Interview with Michael Martone, 2016 Blue Light Books Prize Judge

 

We are proud to have long-time IR contributor Michael Martone judge the inaugural 2016 IR/IU Press Blue Light Books Prize. While readying your short story collections, read his generous interview where he discusses his favorite short story collections, Saturn’s rings, a story’s pulse, and what he might be looking for in the winning short-story collection.

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Photo by Janine Crawley

Michael Martone’s most recent books are Winesburg, Indiana, Four for a Quarter, Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fiction from the Flyover, Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, a collection of essays, and Double-wide, his collected early stories.

Martone’s stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, Story, North American Review, Epoch, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Third Coast, Shenandoah, Bomb, and have appeared and been cited in the Pushcart Prize as well as The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Essays anthologies. He has won two Fellowships from the NEA and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

Martone is currently a Professor at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. He has been a faculty member of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College since 1988. He has taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University, and Syracuse University.

 

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