MAYDAY POETRY CONTEST
Micro-Chapbook Contest
Chapbooks will be published here in Spring 2024
Reading NEAT PANIC gives me tingles at the top of my head! I’m struck by the dazzle, syntactic richness, and alliterative pyrotechnics across each poem. There’s a lyrical dexterity in delicious lines. ‘Faucet water turned / amniotic fluid.’ Through photosynthesis and the siren song, these poems are written for an alchemical future, one that calls for ‘a third thing’ beyond records of atrocity and poison. A large nourishing exhale! I find both sanctuary and ‘the tilt of destruction’ speaking at the ends of an impossible earth. ‘If we do not make it into the calculus, how / should we be counted’ lives eternally in mind. Metamorphosis. Melody. Delight.”
– Sophia Terazawa
JUDGE: Sophia Terazawa
SOPHIA TERAZAWA is the author of Anon and Winter Phoenix, both with Deep Vellum, along with the chapbooks I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press) and Correspondent Medley (Factory Hollow Press), winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. She teaches poetry at Virginia Tech. Her favorite color is purple.
FIRST PLACE WINNER: Neat Panic by Julia Mallory
JULIA MALLORY is committed to being a good steward of, and vessel for her ancestors’ stories. As a storyteller, whose first creative love language is poetry, Julia works across multiple genres with a range of mediums from text to textiles. Her current obsession is analog collage and creating stop-motion animated collages. Julia’s written work has been published widely and nominated for The Pushcart Prize by The Offing and listed among the Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction in the Best of American Essays 2022 for “Cartographies of Heartache.” In 2022, Julia’s short story “Lottie” received the CUSP Prize for Fiction. Julia is the mother of three children and is from the Southside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Find her on Instagram or Twitter @thejuliamallory.
SECOND PLACE: Transcolonial Poem by hanta t. samsa
“Transcolonial Poem stops us in our tracks formally and figuratively with its rejection of patriotism for a nation in which queer, racialized bodies are constantly exploited. As an X-ray of U.S. culture, this micro chapbook reveals the violent interiorities of nature preserves, technological advances, and heteronormative ideals.”
RUNNER UP: Little Divinities by Sophie Hoss
“‘What does a vessel become when it has nothing to carry?’ With prose as beautiful as it is heartbreaking, Little Divinities gives us the hands to hold our yearning, and the wings to set it free. Little Divinities is truly a pocket-sized gem.”
Finalists: Made Of by Chiagoziem Jideofor; Primal Supposings by Nikolas 창훈 (Chang Hoon) Nadeau; Mourning / Forms of by Ben Kline; Queer History by James Brunton; Film Narrative by Aiden Farrell.
MAYDAY FICTION CONTEST
Theme: “Endings”
Read first place winner “Elephant” by Chris Naff
Piercingly relevant, in prose that is crisp and precise, this story confronts gun violence in America’s schools and dares to put us there in the terror of the end-moment, while simultaneously weaving in non-human lessons of care and safety. The contrast shook me to my core. Devastating and memorable, “Elephant” asks us to reckon with the realties, while also creating a possibility space for alternate endings.”– Alissa Hattman
JUDGE: Alissa Hattman
ALISSA HATTMAN is author of the novel Sift. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Carve, The Gravity of the Thing, Propeller, Big Other, Shirley Magazine, MAYDAY, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University and a MA in English Literature from Portland State University. Alissa has worked as a fiction editor, book reviewer, zine librarian, writing group facilitator, and teacher. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
FIRST PLACE WINNER: “Elephant” by Chris Naff
CHRIS NAFF left a corporate training and development career, after two consecutive cancer diagnoses and treatments, to hang out with readers and writers and spend whatever time she had left on the planet to write woven sagas and tiny stories about being human. Today, over a decade later, Chris enjoys continued good health in Northern California with her supportive, hilarious, engineer-husband, and in proximity to her two adult sons. After many workshops and conferences, and drafts, rewrites, and edits–with and among hundreds of generous writers– she is currently seeking representation for her big novel, History of the Dance. Her WIP short story collection, When Last We Spoke, includes previously published Dahlia (Intima), and Elephant, winner of the 2023 Mayday Short Fiction Prize. Find her on Instagram @wondrouswrittenworld.
SECOND PLACE: “Resonance” by Alison Ozawa Sanders.
“I was moved by the quiet brilliance of ‘Resonance.’ The dignity of this short story is that it captures a life through one pivotal moment and, in that moment, we see how an ending for one person marks a difficult beginning for those who remain. The prose is patient, with graceful observations and elegant insights.”
RUNNER UP: “Twenty-Three Crates from China” by Prudence Hemming
“What are the ripple effects of an ending? How long might it last? ‘Twenty-three Crates from China’ shows us the scope of intergenerational loss through reportage and retelling. Formally inventive, poetic and brave, this is a haunting story about the displaced body and the silences that surround those eternal losses.”
Finalists: “The Performance” by Rachel Chou; “The River Path” by John Geddes; “A Tale of Ten Blue Beards: Blue #4” by Karl Kopp; “Brown Solstice” by Melissa DaCosta; “Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Blue Yodel” by Christopher Chilton.
MAYDAY NONFICTION CONTEST
Creative Nonfiction Theme: “Changing my mind.”
Stories about trying to change others’ minds, something you changed your mind about, or a subject you wish you could look at differently. Editors would especially love to see humor in your piece.
Read first place winner “Writing Tips or…” by Ed McManis
Work like Ed McManis’s essay ‘Writing Tips or…’ is precisely what we were after when we settled on “Changing My Mind” as the 2023 MAYDAY Nonfiction Contest theme. We wanted to be moved, made to think, ideally to laugh. There’s something wonderfully extemporaneous in this essayist’s voice. It’s self-deprecating and yet heuristic, funny and still always sincere.”– MAYDAY nonfiction editors
JUDGE: The nonfiction editors of MAYDAY
FIRST PLACE WINNER: “Writing Tips or…” by Ed McManis
ED MCMANIS is a writer, editor, and erstwhile Head of School. His work has appeared in more than 60 publications, including The Blue Road Reader, California Quarterly, Narrative, and Lascaux Review.
SECOND PLACE: “Convergence“ by Kathryn Hively
“Kathryn Hively’s ‘Convergence’ flipped the theme on itself, extending it to the literal changing of mind that the essayist undertakes pharmacologically. But it’s done so deftly and sardonically that it never veers into gimmick. It’s at once dark and playful and serious and comical. And a joy.”
RUNNER UP: “He Started It” by Jim Kelly
“Jim Kelly’s ‘He Started It’ is an excellent example of how critical storytelling is in nonfiction. This essay has everything a good story should: characters, stakes, transformation. And holding it all together is a voice that’s always at the fore but never affected. It’s the kind of writing you’d insist on the author-read version of so you’d know every nuance was there.”