Black Lawrence Press

is currently accepting submissions for the 2012 St. Lawrence Book Award, which is open to poets and writers who have not yet published full-length collections of poems or short stories. The deadline for this prize is August 31.

 More info here.

I spent much of this spring and early summer in a fixed state of bliss. The reason? I was reading wonderful, really wonderful books--entries to the 2012 Hudson Prize. 

In recent years, we've hosted a few prizes that have brought in multiple prize-worthy manuscripts. And in those cases we've offered contracts to finalists. But we've never had a year like this. This year, because of the Hudson Prize, Black Lawrence Press is adding four new authors to its ranks. We extend hearfelt congratulations to Jacob M. Appel who won the 2012 Hudson Prize with his short story collection, Scouting for the Reaper. And we warmly welcome Elizabeth Cantwell, John Mauk, and Jo Ann Clark, all of whom came to us via the prize. 

Complete lists of the 2012 Hudson Prize finalists and semi-finalists can be found on the Black Lawrence Press blog. Now, please let me introduce you to the newest members of the Black Lawrence Press cohort.

Humbly Yours,

Diane Goettel

Executive Editor

Black Lawrence Press 

Winner - Jacob M. Appel

Scouting for the Reaper

Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney and bioethicist based in New York City.  He is the author of more than two hundred published short stories and is a past winner of the Boston Review Short Fiction Competition, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for the Short Story, the Dana Award, the Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction, the North American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize, the Missouri Review’s Editor’s Prize, the Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, the Briar Cliff Review’s Short Fiction Prize, the H. E. Francis Prize, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award on four separate occasions, an Elizabeth George Fellowship and a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writers Grant.   His stories have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Pushcart Prize anthology on numerous occasions.  Jacob holds graduate degrees from Brown University, Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, Harvard Law School, New York University’s MFA program in fiction and Albany Medical College’s Alden March Institute of Bioethics.  He taught for many years at Brown University and currently teaches at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Poetry Finalist - Elizabeth Cantwell

Nights I Let the Tiger Get You

Elizabeth Cantwell's poems have recently appeared in such publications as PANK, The Los Angeles Review, La Petite Zine, Indiana Review, and Matter. She has acted as the managing editor of Gold Line Press, and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband Chris and their small, lazy dog. A former high school teacher, she is now a Provost's Fellow at the University of Southern California, where she is earning her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. 

Fiction Finalist - John Mauk

Field Notes for the Earthbound

John Mauk grew up on the flatland of northwestern Ohio. After completing a PhD in rhetoric (Bowling Green State University), he wrote scholarly articles and college textbooks for several years while quietly studying fiction. In 2010, his short collection, The Rest of Us, won Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook contest, and its first story, “The Earthbound,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Mauk currently teaches writing courses at Northwestern Michigan College. Field Notes for the Earthbound will be his first full-length collection.

Poetry Finalist - Jo Ann Clark

1001 Facts of Prehistoric Life

Jo Ann Clark’s poems and translations have appeared in online and print journals such as the Boston Review, New Republic, Prairie Schooner, Paris Review, Sleet Magazine, and Western Humanities Review. Her work has also been anthologized in Reactions⁴ New Poetry (University of East Anglia, 2003) and in Hot Sonnets (Entasis, 2010). Her first collection, 1001 Facts of Prehistoric Life, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2014. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and has been a fellow of the Thomas J. Watson Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bank Street College, and in international schools in Italy. Currently she is Executive Director of the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in New York. She lives with her husband and son in Sleepy Hollow.