2018 Plonsker Prize at Lake Forest College: $10,000, Residency & Book Publication, Judged by Lida Yukanavitch

It's time, fiction writers, to submit your manuscript for the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize.  The image above depicts the Glen Rowan House, where the winner will be in residence.  Other details below!

*

Judge: Lidia Yukanavitch

Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books is open to submissions on January 1st for the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize from fiction writers under the age of forty who have not yet published a full-length book.

The winning writer receives $10,000, three weeks of residency at Glen Rowan House on the campus of Lake Forest College, and publication of her or his book by Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books, with distribution by Northwestern University Press.

To enter: Submit (here!) a thirty-page sample of a book-length work in progress, along with a one-page statement of plans for completion. We cap submissions at 200. Submissions close on March 1, 2018. Submissions will not be accepted before January 1, 2018.

For more information on the Plonsker Prize, click here.

Past winners and judges


2017 Winner (Poetry)
Christine Larusso, Los Angeles, CA: MAR (forthcoming, 2018)
Judge: Carmen Giménez Smith

2016 Winner (Prose):
Meg Whiteford, author of An Ordered World, a novel (forthcoming, 2018)
Judge: Brian Evenson

2015 Winner (Prose):
Christopher Perez, author of gaugin’s notebook, a poetic narrative (2017)
Judge: Eleni Sikelianos

2014 Winner (Prose):
Matthew Nye, author of Pike and Bloom, a novel (2016)
Judge: Anne-Laure Tissut

2013 Winner (Poetry):
Cecilia K. Corrigan, author of Titanic, a book of poems (2014)
Judge: Lisa Roberston

2012 Winner (Prose):
Elizabeth Gentry, author of Housebound, a novel (2013)
Judge: Kate Bernheimer

2011 Winner (Poetry):
José Perez Beduya, Throng, a book of poems (2012)
Judge: Jennifer Moxley

2010 Winner (Prose):
Gretchen Henderson, Galerie de Difformité, a hybrid narrative (2011)

2009 Winner (Poetry):
Jessica Savitz, Hunting is Painting, a book of poems (2010)

"And the Winner is...": The 2014 Madeleine P. Plonsker Award Winner Revealed!

The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize, now in its sixth year, honors an author under forty years old with no major book publication.  The winner receives ten thousand dollars, publication of his or her manuscript by Lake Forest College Press (with national distribution via Northwestern University Press), a spot in the Lake Forest Literary Festival, nd a two-month residency at the Glen Rowan House, with the time to be spent revising the manuscript.  The prize alternates each year between fiction and poetry.  It's a great thing, and I'm glad to have been a part of it since the beginning.

This year's winner, Matthew Nye, was selected by guest judge Anne-Laure Tissut, Professor of American Literature at Rouen University, France (some of you may know her as one of the organizers of the 2012 &NOW Festival in Paris).

Matthew Nye's manuscript, Pike and Bloom, is a work of fiction of which Tissut writes "[it] leads the reader into a refreshingly comic immersion in major metaphysical and existential questions."  Nye is a graduate of Dartmouth and the University of Utah, and currently lives in that wondrous little outpost of civilization that is Athens, Georgia, where he is pursuing his doctorate.

2013-14 Plonsker Prize winner Matthew Nye

The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize is made possible by a donation from a local philanthropist who was impressed by the College’s recently established publishing enterprise, Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books. The previous winners are:

• Jessica Savitz for Hunting Is Painting (poetry);
• Gretchen E. Henderson for Galerie de Difformité (fiction);
• Jose Perez Beduya for Throng (poetry);
• Elizabeth Gentry for Housebound (fiction, forthcoming in November);
• Cecilia K. Corrigan for Titanic (poetry, forthcoming in Fall 2014).

The 2014-2015 Plonsker Prize will be awarded to a poet under forty years of age who has not yet published a full-length book. Poets interested in applying should submit a curriculum vita, a 30-page excerpt from a manuscript in progress, and a one-page statement of plans for completion to &NOW Books / Lake Forest College press via Submittable.com

The submission period is January 1 through March 1, 2013; no more than 200 submissions total will be considered. There is no entry fee.