Posts Tagged: Blue Light Books Prize

Article Thumbnail

Announcing the 2020 Blue Light Books Prize Winner

We are thrilled to announce that prize judge Michelle Pretorius has selected The World of Dew and Other Stories by Julian Mortimer Smith as the winner of the 2020 Blue Light Books Prize! We received a record number of submissions this year and are honored to have read so many beautiful books. Thank you all for your submissions and for making this year’s Blue Light Books Prize possible. The World of Dew and Other Stories will be published by Indiana University Press in 2021 as part of the Blue Light Books Series, which includes previous prize-winning collections Fierce Pretty Things by Tom Howard, Girl with Death Mask by Jenn Givhan, and God Had a Body by Jennie Maria Malboeuf.

***

2020 Blue Light Books Prize Winner

THE WORLD OF DEW AND OTHER STORIES

by Julian Mortimer Smith

***

And congratulations to prize finalists…

Us Girls by Shasta Grant

They Kept Running by Michelle Ross

***

Interested in more publishing opportunities with IR / IU Press? The Don Belton Fiction Reading Period is open May 1 – May 31. Send fiction manuscripts up to 80,000 words for a chance to win $1,000 and publication.

Article Thumbnail

Interview with 2017 Blue Light Reader Andrea Lewis

Andrea Lewis’s short story collection What My Last Man Did won the Indiana Review / IU Press 2016 Blue Light Books Prize (IU Press 2017), and will be launching this Saturday at the Blue Light Reading! In this interview, she discusses research, place, music, and how she knew What My Last Man Did was ready to submit. Be sure to read excerpts of Andrea’s prize-winning collection, and order your copy from IU Press today!

*

Andrea Lewis’s work has appeared in many literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Cutthroat, Cold Mountain Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader. Three of her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a founding member of Richard Hugo House, the place for writers in Seattle. She lives with her husband on Vashon Island, Washington. More of her work is available at www.andrealewis.org.

Read more…

Article Thumbnail

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.

Read more…

Article Thumbnail

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.

*

martoneauthorpic

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.

 

Read more…