Boston Review Short Story Contest

Recently rededicated to the memory of the late author and critic Aura Estrada, and judged in its first year by her husband, Francisco Goldman, the Aura Estrada Short Story Contest is now accepting submissions for 2011. This year’s judge is acclaimed novelist and
critic Samuel R. Delany.

The winning author will receive $1,500 and have his or her work published in Boston Review, the summer of 2012. First runner-up will be published in a following issue, and second runner-up will be published at the Boston Review Web site. Stories should not exceed 4,000 words and must be previously unpublished. Mailed manuscripts should be double-spaced and submitted with a cover note listing the author’s name, address, and phone number. No cover note is necessary for online submission. Names should not appear on the stories themselves. Any author writing in English is eligible, unless he or she is a current student, former student, relative, or close personal friend of the judge. Simultaneous submissions are not permitted, submissions will not be returned, and submissions may not be modified after entry. A non-refundable $20 entry fee, payable to Boston Review in the form of a check or money order or by credit card, must accompany each story entered. All submitters receive a complementary half-year subscription (3 issues) to Boston Review. Submissions must be postmarked no later than October 1, 2011. Manuscripts will not be returned. The winner will be announced no later than May/June 2012, on the Boston Review Web site.

Enter using the online contest entry manager, which requires payment using a credit card. Or mail submissions to Short Story Contest, Boston Review, PO Box 425786, Cambridge, MA 02142.

"GOD LIQUORS LOOSE EACH ASHEN TONGUE"

Below, and at the Boston Review website, Gregory Pardlo reads his poem "Palling Around":

This video is part of BR's special package celebrating National Poetry Month. The rich jangle of noun phrases Pardlo is using here is rather like what Lucy Brock-Broido was writing in her dense poems of the eighties; for example, these lines from "I Wish You Love" [from AGNI 27, 1988, pg. 11]:

Like Josef's skull ascending from Brazilian soil
On a twine, she rises from her famous white bed,
Exhumed by morning. I am hunted into daylight
When I wake like that, god-hungry, startled.
Now that my father is gone, he has gone
Luminous. I wish him love.