From Our Staff | December 20, 2011
Winners of the 2011 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize
We are delighted to announce the winners of our 21st annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Let’s get to it!
Fiction
Winner: Yuko Sakata of Madison, WI for “Unintended”
Finalists:
Jessica F. Kane of New York, NY, for “The Essentials of Acceleration”
Thomas Pierce of Charlottesville, VA, for “Grasshopper Kings”
Bart Skarzynski of Columbus, OH for “Project X”
Poetry
Winner: David Kirby of Tallahassee, FL
Finalists:
Steve Gehrke of Reno, NV
Cynthia Marie Hoffman of Madison, WI
Mark Wunderlich of Catskill, NY.
Essay
Winner: Peter Selgin of Winter Park, FL, for “The Kuhreihen Melody”
Finalists:
May-Lee Chai of San Francisco, CA, for “The Blue Boot”
Mako Yoshikawa of Cambridge, MA, for “My Father’s Women”
Dave Zoby of Casper, WY, for “Leftovers, 1993”
We received over 2500 manuscripts this year, and the overall quality was extraordinarily good, making our decision a difficult one. This is of course a good thing: selecting winners of a contest should never be easy, and it certainly wasn’t for us. We’re very thankful to all the writers who entered this year. TMR is only as good as the work we publish, and we are grateful that so many writers sent us their very best work.
We were particularly thrilled to find out, after we accepted her work, that “Unintended” will be Yuko Sakata’s first published story!
I also want to say “Thanks!” to our staff. Promotion of the Editors’ Prize began in May, months before we get the chance to even start reading the submissions. Also, there is the never-ending amount of administrative work that goes into promoting the contest. Then we had to make the tough decisions on semi-finalists, finalists, and making the recommendations for our winners. And, we pulled it off! All of this was done successfully only because of our contest editor, Claire McQuerry, who did all the hard work behind the scenes to make our contest a huge success. Her staff was once again tremendous this year. Thank you to all the editors, advisors, and interns who made it happen.
We’re making plans right now for our Editors’ Prize weekend, our annual spring reception and reading honoring the winners of the contest. Details will be forthcoming as soon as we lock down the date. The 2012 Editors’ Prize issue will be out in April. I’m positive you’ll find these stories, poems, and essays as engaging and memorable as we did.
Congratulations to Yuko, David, and Peter!
Follow Michael Nye on Twitter: @mpnye
SEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT
From Our Staff
Jul 28 2020
Congratulations to the Winners and Runners-Up of the 2020 Miller Audio Prize
On behalf of the Missouri Review’s editorial staff and final judge Alex Sujong Laughlin, we congratulate the winners and runners-up of the 13th Annual Miller Audio Prize: DOCUMENTARY Winner: “Climb… read more
From Our Staff
Jan 15 2020
Congratulations to the Winners, Runners-Up, & Finalists of the 2019 Editors’ Prize!
On behalf of Editor-in-Chief Speer Morgan and the entire editorial staff of the Missouri Review, it is our great pleasure to announce the winners, runners-up, and finalists for the 2019… read more
From Our Staff
Jul 03 2019
Please join us in congratulating the winners and runners-up for the 2019 Miller Audio Prize!
On behalf of our final judge, Cher Vincent, we are pleased to announce the winner and runner-up in each category: DOCUMENTARY Winner: “How to Make an American Pi Quilt,”… read more