The Smoking Poet Fourth Short Story and Poetry Contest 2011

The Smoking Poet is a literary ezine, established in 2006, and published online on a quarterly basis. TSP’s fourth short story and poetry contest is open to all writers, whether or not they have been past contributors to TSP.

Prizes will be awarded to the top three stories: first prize, $250; second prize, $100; third prize, $50. In poetry: first prize $100; second prize $75; third prize $50. All of the winners will be published in the winter issue of The Smoking Poet, online in mid December 2011. Winners will also be included in our upcoming anthology, Putting on the Dog: TSP Celebrates 5, commemorating our fifth anniversary celebration of publication.

Honorary judge in the poetry category is Derick Burleson. Derick Burleson's first book, Ejo: Poems, Rwanda 1991-94 won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review and Poetry, among other journals. He was featured poet in The Smoking Poet, talking to our readers about his book Never Night. A recipient of a 1999 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Burleson teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and lives with his partner and daughter in Two Rivers, Alaska.

An entry fee of $20 per short story submission is required, payment to be made through PayPal. An entry fee of $10 per three poems (or fewer) is required, payment to be made through PayPal.  You may send as many entries as you like, but an entry fee is required per each short story and per each set of three or fewer poems.

Your entry will not be eligible and will not be read until entry fee is received.

Entries must be submitted as a Word doc file, one per e-mail, in Times New Roman, 12-point font, and double-spaced. The author’s name, address, and telephone number must appear in the upper right hand corner. Word count must not exceed 4,000 for short stories . Any one poem should not exceed two pages in length. Please include a short bio statement, not to exceed 100 words, in the body of your e-mail.

The judges for the contest are Zinta Aistars, editor-in-chief of The Smoking Poet; Joannie Kervren Stangeland, poetry editor of The Smoking Poet, and ... an honorary judge yet to be announced.  Watch for updates soon.

Submission deadline for the contest is November 30, 2011. Please send your submission with the subject line stating CONTEST/Last Name to thesmokingpoet@gmail.com If the subject line does not state CONTEST, then we will assume it is a submission for the ezine.

We look forward to reading your best work! See also general submission guidelines for the upcoming summer issue.