Posts Tagged: Genre Questions

Thirteen Word Story Twitter Contest Results

Thank you to everyone who submitted to our Twitter contest with your 13 word stories!

We know it isn’t easy to write a story in such a small space, something submitters to our 1/2 K Prize are currently experiencing firsthand. Plus, we threw in the monkey wrench of associating the image to some frankly eyebrow-raising images. All of our wonderful followers rose to the challenge, and we are here to announce the winners of our awesome prizes.

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Interview with 1/2K Prize Finalist: Caitlin Scarano

Caitlin-Scarano-e1395083194898-250x300There are just over three weeks left to submit to the 2014 1/2 K Prize.  Before you find yourself panicking in front of a blank page take a few minutes to gain some insight from Caitlin Scarano. Her rich, assured “No Men in the Title, a Poem to Birds and Places” was a finalist for our 2013 1/2K Prize. Here she responds to questions posed to her about the prose poem form, discussing the distillation of language, the value of hybridity, and interrogating cliché.
How did the byline you included, “A crack in a boulder can never be an entrance to a cathedral”—a line from poet Eduardo C. Corral, inspire or otherwise inform this poem?
I was taken by that line because it made me consider how people can be born into limitations, for example, a cycle of abuse or poverty. There are some circumstances, places, histories, and experiences we can never fully transcend. Even if we overcome those circumstances, we cannot erase the influence and consequences of them. This is why my poem cycles in on itself and negates its own assertions. We cannot be what we are not. I am a product of my family and its history, which, metaphorically speaking, is more crack in a boulder than cathedral – nowhere near divine or pure – but beautiful and compelling in its own way.