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Boston Review is pleased to adopt a contest model shaped by social justice and accessibility concerns.
In the next section you will find a description of this year’s theme for both contests, and then continue reading below that for genre-specific contest guidelines.
The Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest and the Aura Estrada Short Story Contest share the same theme this year:
We bear deep wounds—individually and collectively, for generations, for a lifetime, for a year, for a day. All have been worsened by a destructive period of pyrrhic politics that left us ill-equipped to respond to a global health catastrophe. As we struggle as a society to recover our footing and grieve our dead, Arts in Society believes that the literary arts must have a voice in the conversation about how we heal.
Tell us what it means to repair from a terrible rupture, a life-threatening harm or illness. How do we return to health, to wholeness? Is “return” even the right idea? We want to know if you think repair is possible from toxic politics, from pandemic, from racist horrors, from class warfare, from Islamophobia, from gendered violence and “reparative” therapy, from ecological brinksmanship.
Consider the meditations of Adrienne Rich:
Or the words of Cameron Awkward-Rich:
these scars bear witness
but whether to repair
or to destruction
I no longer know
—Adrienne Rich, “Meditations for a Savage Child”
Reflect on the Japanese art of 金継ぎ (kintsugi), where the repair is highlighted by a seam of gold.
We are thinking about the timeliness of Toni Morrison writing that wishes for a “return to normal” are distractions from righteous demands for something more revolutionary, more catalytic: “They fill their mind and hands with soap and repair . . . because what is waiting for them, in a suddenly idle moment, is the seep of rage. Molten. Thick and slow-moving. Mindful and particular about what in its path it chooses to bury. Or else, into a beat of time, and sideways under their breasts, slips a sorrow they don’t know where from.”
Or, as Haruki Murakami writes, “I don’t want to be ‘repaired’.”
But because we believe in the power of art, we are also thinking of when Jonathan Saffron Foer, in Everything Is Illuminated, says, “I can repair my mistakes when I perform mistakes. . . . With writing, we have second chances.”
Or when Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says: “Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
Tell us where we go from here. Tell us how we get out of this mess.
Aura Estrada Short Story Contest
Deadline: May 31, 2021 (free global/hardship entries); June 30, 2021 (paid entries)
Judge: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
First Prize: $1,000 and publication
THIS YEAR’S JUDGE: KALI FAJARDO-ANSTINE
Kali Fajardo-Anstine is the author of Sabrina & Corina (One World, 2019), finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, The Story Prize, The Saroyan International Prize, and winner of an American Book Award and Reading the West Award. Fajardo-Anstine is the 2019 recipient of the Denver Mayor’s Award for Global Impact in the Arts. Her writing has appeared in print and online at Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O, the Oprah Magazine, The American Scholar, Boston Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Idaho Review, Southwestern American Literature, and elsewhere. Kali has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Tin House, and Hedgebrook. She holds an MFA from the University of Wyoming and is from Denver, Colorado. Her work has been translated into multiple languages.
Complete guidelines:
Our contest is named after Aura Estrada (1977–2007), a promising young Mexican writer and student and wife of Francisco Goldman. This prize is meant to honor her memory by supporting other burgeoning writers. Aura’s writing, and more about her life, can be found here.
Entries are accepted exclusively through Submittable. Please make sure to select the correct form, paid or free, depending on your circumstances.
Read winning stories from past years:
Sabrina Helen Li’s Mother, Grow My Baby (Fall 2019)
Neshat Khan’s The Neighbors (Spring 2019)
Herselman Hattingh’s The Recorder (2018)
Gina Balibrera’s Álvaro (2017)
Mikayla Ávila Vilá’s Trumpeteers (2016)
Barbara Hamby’s Dole Girl (2015)
Leslee Becker’s Severance (2014)
Kerry-Lee Powell’s There Are Two Pools You May Drink From (2013)
Alexandra Thom’s The Piano (2012)
Kalpana Narayanan’s Aviator on the Prowl (2011)
Adam Sturtevant’s How Do I Explain? (2010)
Jessica Treglia’s Canceled (2009)
Patricia Engel’s Desaliento (2008)
Padma Viswanathan’s Transitory Cities (2007)
Tiphanie Yanique’s How to Escape from a Leper Colony (2006)
Lisa Chipongian’s Intramuros (2005)
D.S. Sulaitis’s If It’s Anywhere, It’s Behind Us (2004)
Gale Renee Walden’s Men I Don’t Talk to Anymore (2003)
Manini Nayar’s Home Fires (2002)
Kate Small’s One Night a Year (2001)
Girija Tropp’s The Pretty Ones Have Their Uses (2001)
Pauls Toutonghi’s Regeneration (2000)
Jacob M. Appel’s Shell Game with Organs (1999)
Kris Saknussemm’s Unpracticed Fingers Bungle Sadly Over Tiny Feathered Bodies (1998)
Kiki Delancey’s Jules Jr Michael Jules Jr (1997)
Mary Ann Jannazo’s No Runs, No Hits, No One Left on Base (1996)
Tom Paine’s The Milkman & I (1995)
Michael Dorris’s Layaway (1994)
Annual Poetry Contest
Deadline: May 31, 2021 (free global/hardship entries); June 30, 2021 (paid entries)
Judge: Sonia Sanchez
First Prize: $1,000 and publication
THIS YEAR’S JUDGE: SONIA SANCHEZ
Sonia Sanchez—poet, activist, scholar—was the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Temple University. She is the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books.
Complete guidelines:
Entries are accepted exclusively through Submittable. Please make sure to select the correct form, paid or free, depending on your circumstances:
Read winning poems from past years:
C. X. Hua (2019)
Kim Parko (2018)
Mia Kang (2017)
Cori A. Winrock (2016)
Safiya Sinclair (2015)
Francine J. Harris (2014)
Scott Coffel (2013)
Sarah Crossland (2012)
Heather Tone (2011)
Anthony Caleshu (2010)
John Gallaher (2009)
Sarah Arvio (2008)
Elizabeth Willis (2007)
Marc Gaba (2006)
Mike Perrow (2005)
Michael Tod Edgerton (2004)
Susan Wheeler (2003)
Max Winter (2002)
D. A. Powell (2001)
Christopher Edgar (2000)
Stephanie Strickland (1999)
Daniel Bosch (1998)
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