NEW:

06.16.09: The $5 IFC Contest Results are in [link]. Chapbook contest results coming in the next couple weeks.

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06.16.09: The $5 IFC Contest Results are in. Emails have been sent to all who submitted electronically. We don't do snail mailings for this contest, so if you sent a SASE, it has been recycled.

Celebrity judge Brian Evenson selected August Tarrier's story, "Field Notes," as our 2009 winner. Congratulations to her. She will receive $1000 and publication in our summer fiction issue (DIAGRAM 9.3).

We'll also publish five finalist stories in the summer fiction issue:

Micah Nathan's "Simulacrum"
Jenny Zhang's "The Empty the Empty the Empty"
Erica W Adams' "Opening"
Michael Agresta's "After the Party"
Kristina Born's "Jack Twig is the Evil Pulse of Canada"

along with some other work. Thanks to everyone who entered. We had about 400 entries this year, which is kind of insane. We guess $5 is the right entry fee... and we hope to read more of your work in the future.

Ander Monson, Editor

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The 2009 Contest Guidelines for the NMP/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest (deadline for mailing of submissions: 03.27.09) are available now just below on this page:

NMP/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest
 mailing deadline for submissions: 03.27.09

PRIZE & SUBMISSIONS INFO

$1000 honorarium, 25 copies of the finely-printed chapbook, author can purchase more at 40% discount.

We will also publish at least one other finalist manuscript, possibly more (in 2008 we published three).

18-44 manuscript pages of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, mixed-genre, or genre-bending work. Images can be included, though they must be black and white (and we can't return entries so please no original artwork). No more than one poem (if yer sending poems) per page unless they're very short.

$16 reading fee (U.S. funds please; cash if you want to risk it, money orders, or checks made out to New Michigan Press, or use your credit card by clicking on the button below, in which case mention on your cover letter that you paid online. (If you pay online, you're welcome to send SASEs snail mail for a copy of the winning chapbook and notifications.)

If you pay online, you're welcome to use the DIAGRAM submissions manager system to submit your work; this way you will definitely get a response—create an account and submit your story, and this is important, you must choose the genre as "Chapbook Contest Entry Only" for your manuscript to be considered; you must also pay the entry fee ($16) through paypal or else via snail mail. Note that you will receive an automated submission acknowledgment via email (it's the boilerplate one we send for regular DIAGRAM submissions, so ignore that part of the email).

Here is the button for submitting your payment electronically. Rock:

[omitted since deadline is passed!]

So, make sure you send us a business-sized SASE with $0.44 of postage if you'd like notification of the results. Manuscripts cannot be returned (sorry—please don't send your only copy).

Enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard if you'd like confirmation that we received your manuscript.

Enclose a self-addressed 6"x9" envelope with $2 of postage (in USA—$6 is a safe bet if you're sending from overseas) if you would like a complimentary copy of the winning chapbook (or another chapbook in our series—please specify which, if any). If you do not care, there is no need for this. Unfortunately we are giving up on IRCs. They don't seem to work. It is truly horrible. If you'd like us to mail out a copy internationally please make sure you include a self-addressed envelope and either an extra $6 for postage, or $6 worth of US postage.

Please do not send submissions certified mail, express mail, or anything we have to sign for; it's a pain. If you want to overnight it, please check off the "no signature req'd" box.

It's fine with us if individual works have been published elsewhere, but the manuscript can't have been published as a whole before. Please include specific acknowledgments if any of the works have appeared elsewhere—tell us where individual pieces appeared, as we consider submitted work for possible publication in DIAGRAM.

This contest is open to both published and unpublished writers.

Multiple submissions are fine; a separate reading fee is required for each.

Mail to: NMP/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest, English Department, P.O. Box 210067, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0067.

We recommend that your manuscript be as coherent as possible. Chapbook manuscripts do not necessarily have to be diagrammatic (though the diagrammers among us do enjoy those).

About the Chapbook as an Art Form: Though we are a small press with fairly limited resources, we are devoted to producing striking and elegant (when appropriate to the subject matter) chapbooks, and we keep them in print. We feel that we run one of the classier chapbook operations around. (The Wick Poetry Program through Kent State University runs a series of chapbooks that we envy, as does Octopus.) All contest entry fees go to support the contest, chapbook series, and the press.

Typically we narrow the field down to 10-15 finalists, all of which are considered for publication (even if they don't win the contest; in 2003, NMP published four contest finalist mss.; in 2004, we published two; in 2005, we published four; 2006: four; etc.). All work submitted (unless previously published) is considered for possible publication in DIAGRAM.

We don't have a celebrity judge for our chapbook contest. Since we pick the majority of our chapbooks from the submissions to the contest, we judge everything internally. The final judge is our editor, Ander Monson.

Our readers change from year to year; we read work anonymously and try to be open to both traditional and experimental work. We strive to vary our aesthetic year to year and be open to what is excellent and moving.

Buy previous winners and other NMP chapbooks [here] to see what we mean. It is probably a good idea to do so if you haven't read our work before. I mean, it's always a good idea to do this with presses.

Questions? Email <nmp@thediagram.com>.

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The 2009 $5 Innovative Fiction Contest Guidelines:

DIAGRAM $5 Innovative Fiction Contest

deadline for receipt of submissions: 03/09/09

***deadline has passed (alas, alas); now we judge and judge and judge and results forthcoming

PRIZE & SUBMISSIONS INFO

PRIZE: $1000 honorarium, publication in DIAGRAM's 2009 summer fiction issue.

JUDGE: Brian Evenson, very interesting writer, author of Fugue State, Last Days, The Wavering Knife, The Open Curtain, Dark Property, Altmann's Tongue, etc.

SPECS: an unpublished story of less than 10,000 words (multiple stories entered are fine with individual entry fees, simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you let us know immediately if it's accepted elsewhere). Short is fine (5 words was our former minimum, but Poets & Writers confused it and mislabeled it as 5,000 words last year so we curse them and have come up with new language). Long is fine (well, 10,000 words worth of long). We have no preference between short and long if it is good, which we very much hope it is.

A NOTE ON THIS PARTICULAR CONTEST: this is a bare-bones contest. Hey. It's only $5. We cannot send responses via SASE or stuff any envelopes of any sort. If you want to get a response (email with the list of winners, and of course winners will be notified), enter ONLINE (below).

ENTRY FEE is still just $5. The price of a footlong. The price of a good beer at a decent bar. Online entry through our submissions manager system is much preferred. See below. If you send a check, please make it out to New Michigan Press. Send cash if you want to risk it.

If you pay online, you're welcome to use the DIAGRAM submissions manager system to submit your work; this way you will definitely get a response. First, create an account and submit your story, and this is important, you must choose the genre as "$5 Innovative Fiction Contest Entry ONLY" for your manuscript to be considered; you must also pay the entry fee ($5) through paypal via button below or else via snail mail. Note that you will receive an automated submission acknowledgment via email (it's the boilerplate one we send for regular DIAGRAM submissions, so ignore that part of the email).

Please don't put your name on the story itself since they are read anonymously.

Second, fill out the last name & story title for your entry and click the button for submitting your payment electronically via Paypal. Rock:

[paypal button discontinued because the deadline has passed]

Here's how it works: our readers (anonymous, new each year) read every story at least twice. We choose 10-15 finalists (typically). These stories—anonymized!—go to our celebrity judge, who picks the winner. The finalists and the winner receive contracts for publication. The winner gets $1000. The finalists get a piece of DIAGRAMwear also. But you can buy your own; you don't need to be a finalist to wear DIAGRAM on your back/ass/chest/etc.

Permissions: if you include images or found text in your story, you must hold or be able to get the necessary permissions to reproduce them (or if they fall under the "fair use" doctrine, that's fine, too) if your story is selected.

Sweet? Sweet.

Questions? Email <editor@thediagram.com>.

 

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01.05.09: Here are the 2008 Hybrid Essay Contest results. Congrats to our winner and finalists, and many thanks to all who entered. If you sent snail mail you'll be getting a note via snail mail soonish.

The Winner: Matthew Glenwood, for "John Henry's Tracks." He will receive $1000 and publication in a future issue of DIAGRAM.

We will also publish these four finalists:
--Jason Anthony's "Antarctic Aesthetics"
--Michael Jauchen's "Am I Jewish?: Notes Toward a Hermeneutics of the Fake Family History"
--Nik De Dominic's "Postage Partum"
--Anne Shaw's "Monstrosities"

Many thanks to you for entering our first ever hybrid essay contest. Admittedly we didn't know what we would get when we started it, what we even meant by hybrid. As you surely noticed in our guidelines. We wanted more interesting, multiform nonfiction, and we got lots of it (yours included). Our goal was mostly to encourage the writing of stranger nonfictions and to encourage those who are working on these odder pieces to send them our way. I think we accomplished this, and it would not have worked without your help. We will run another hybrid essay contest next year, and I hope you'll consider sending your work to it (or to us in a non-contest way, also encouraged; we read year round). And I hope you'll come back by to check out the winners (should appear in DIAGRAM 9.1, out at the end of February).

As you know, without your support of this project, NMP and DIAGRAM would not be able to continue, so we thank you greatly for sending your work our way.

Best,
Contest Judges: Ander Monson, Editor and Nicole Walker, Nonfiction Editor

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10.31.08: Happy Halloween! The Hybrid Essay Contest is closed for submissions. Thanks if you entered. Boo hoo if you did not. Results to be posted here before January. Ideally sooner. New chapbook contest guidelines forthcoming in November, yo.

06.27.08: The 2008 Hybrid Essay Contest Guidelines

So here, friends, is the lowdown.

DIAGRAM announces, to inaugurate our new nonfiction editorship (of Nicole Walker) and our continuing interest in reinvented, unusual literature, a contest for an unpublished (in a serial/magazine/journal/book or on a non-personal website) hybrid essay.

Submit an unpublished essay of up to 10,000 words with a $15 reading fee by October 30, 2008. We are particularly interested in hybrid essays, texts that exhibit some form of hybridity.

The prize is $1000 + publication. We'll shoot for publishing several of our finalists, too, in DIAGRAM.

Judged by Ander Monson and Nicole Walker, a hybrid if you ever saw one. Who's the ass end? Who's the head part? NO ONE KNOWS. It's scary.

What is a hybrid essay? Well, many essays are hybrids to start with—involving fiction, memoir, poetry, art, photography, mathematics. The essay is a hybrid form—it can take many shapes. We want to encourage this, to see your weirdo essays that have visual elements, information from other disciplines, or that marry two forms, or three shapes, or whatever.

What do we mean? See Lia Purpura's essay (DIAGRAM 8.4) on hybridity, Albert Goldbarth's book Griffin (Essay Press, 2007), or really nearly any essay that qualifies as lyric for some examples. We like our descriptions ambiguous because we don't want to limit what we get. No one likes a reductive definition.

Okay. You're convinced. It's going to be great. You want to throw your hat in the ring. Here's how to submit:

Electronic (preferred but maybe a little awkward (sorry)!):

STAGE ONE: Pay contest fee through Paypal by clicking on the button below.

[contest deadline passed so the button is gone]

STAGE TWO: submit through our killer Submissions Manager system [here]. You'll have to create an account if you haven't submitted to us before. Make SURE, SURE, that when you enter the submission, you choose CONTEST SUBMISSION. That way it gets read/processed properly. If you submit under something else things will get munged (though we are happy to read your non-contest submissions whenever, of course). Please give us some kind of cover letter if you like.

Snail mail (not preferred but you can hit this if it's easier): submissions can go to Hybrid Essay Contest, c/o Ander Monson, Dept. of English, P.O. Box 210067, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721-0067. Make checks out to DIAGRAM or send cash. Or pay online with the button above anyhow and make a note on your cover letter. Include a SASE or your email address for notification.

We need to receive your submission by October 30, 2008, for your work to be considered.

And, since you asked, you may submit multiple separate submissions, though each would require its own entry fee for consideration.

We'll read everything closely, pick finalists, and hopefully announce our winner by Xmas 2008. We'll send out notifications to everyone who submitted.

Good luck, and thanks for entering the contest.

Questions can go to <nmp--at--thediagram.com>. Images are fine (as long as you have or can get permission to reproduce them if published). Multi- or mixed-media is fine.

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06.15.08: Results of the 2008 Chapbook Contest Below! And announcing a contest (what, more contests? why yes. We like judging and awarding, apparently) with an October 30, 2008 deadline (for receipt of submissions): The DIAGRAM hybrid essay contest, for the best hybrid essay we receive. We'll post full guidelines later this week, but the gist is this: we want to read your hybrid essays for a special all-essay issue. And we will award the best one submitted into the contest goodness. Rock on, you. Rock on, us. More info to come. In the meantime, try out:

The 2008 Chapbook Contest Results

THE LOWDOWN:

The Winner: Marc McKee, What Apocalypse?

We will also publish: Chloë Joan López, Quodlibet and Jennifer Moss, Beast, to be your Friend

Finalists: Erin Bertram, Febrile; Jack Boettcher, The Deviants; Travis Brown, Brainard’s Branch; Matthew Byrne, Captivity Practices; Dana Curtis, Antiviolet; Ori Fienberg, The Hummingbird's Guide to the Inner Ear; Miriam Bird Greenberg, A Child's Primer of Augury; Matthew Hittinger, Specular Reflection; Jamie Iredell, When I Moved to Nevada; Carrie Jerrell, Dearly Beloved; Trevor Kearns, Cross Words; Steve Lautermilch, The Book of Character and Change; Genine Lentine, Mr. Worthington's Beautiful Experiments on Splashes; Clay Matthews, Sire; Christopher Nelson, The Principle of the Knot; Linnea Ogden, I and the Starling; Alexis Orgera, How Like Foreign Objects; Stephany Prodromides, Fishnet; Billy Reynolds, Moving Parts; Rebecca Rubin, Glossary; Zach Savich, Don Quixote

METHOD:

We received over 400 submissions (thanks, y'all!) and enjoyed our long task quite a bit. Each chapbook submission was read thoroughly at least twice, blind, by our panel of anonymous but awesome and tastefully-dressed readers. These readers selected about 45 semifinalists, from which the editors picked 24 finalists, from which Ander Monson picked our winner and the two other chapbooks selected for publication.

Thanks to everyone who submitted, as always. Official responses will be going out this week. SASEs will be stuffed. When we complete production on Marc's chapbook (Fall) we'll mail those off to anyone who gave us chapbook-sized envelopes. And we'll get next year's guidelines posted in October if not before. On this page. Thanks for your attention.

—Editors

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The 2008 $5 Innovative Fiction Contest Results:

METHOD:

1> each story was read blind, multiple times by multiple readers. Our readers selected the semifinalists (about 40).

2> from this pool our editors and specialized reader types selected the finalists, eight of them. We disqualified one (it had been withdrawn: sad day for DIAGRAM), and passed them onto Kelly Link, our celebrity judge.

3> She chose "Quell the Mayhem Night" by Debra Di Blasi as the winner. Cheers to Debra.

OUTCOME: Debra will receive a $1000 honorarium and of course everlasting glory. This story, of course, rules. As do the other finalist stories, frankly, any one of which could easily have been picked by any individual reader as the winner. But Kelly is our designated Authority, and she has spoken.

Here are the other finalist stories, all of which will be published in our upcoming all-fiction issue at the end of June. The finalists also get delicious DIAGRAM apparel: hot POE TRY shorts and sweet shirts. Rock!

  • "And What of Boys? What Land Do They People?" by Elisabeth Benjamin
  • "Four Secrets and Three Lies I Have to Tell About Love." by Kea Wilson
  • "Girls Who Love Horses" by Amanda Goldblatt
  • "The Many Forms of Rain ___ Sent Upon Us In Those Days Before the Last Days" by Blake Butler
  • "Snow" by Mark Leidner
  • "There Will Be Sense" by Amelia Gray

Check back to see the issue. We hope you like it. We think these stories rocked the hardest out of all those that were entered (300 or so). I have no doubt we might have missed a couple really good ones, stories that almost completed the task of rocking us, but that we overlooked somehow. Sorry for that. Yours may well have been one of them. But these are the favorites, so they're the ones we chose.

And keep us in mind for your future fiction submissions--we read year round, and are always interested in innovative work. Next year's contest deadline will be about the same time. Brian Evenson has signed on to judge, and he is pretty much a badass. So start the engines churning, gentlemen, ladies, and others--

We appreciate your entry in our little contest. It doesn't really make any money, but it makes us happy. And hopefully you too.

Best,
Ander Monson, Editor

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04.02.08: Both of our 2008 contests have closed. We are reading madly. We will post the results here when we have them.

The 2008 Chapbook Contest results will be sent via email to entrants who used our submissions manager. If you sent a SASE, we'll stuff them and send them back with the results.

And of course the winning chapbook will be mailed to those entrants who gave us proper envelopes and postage when it is ready (Fall 2008).

The 2008 $5IFC results will be posted here and emailed to all entrants who submitted via submissions manager. No envelopes will be stuffed for the $5IFC (as the guidelines indicate). We'll try to send emails to people who submitted nonelectronically but we don't promise anything. The official results will be here when we have them.

Thanks for your interest and entries. Now for the hard work. —Ander

We will very likely have a contest for form-interested nonfiction with an October deadline in 2008. More info once we have it.

 

 

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On this page, find:

Contest Guidelines:

Contest Results: