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The 2010 Arts & Letters Prizes competition will accept submissions from January 1 to March 15 (postmark deadline).  Please check back for information on final judges. International authors: please see new guidelines relating to submissions from outside the U.S.

 

Submissions are first reviewed anonymously by the Arts & Letters editorial staff.  The staff selects our finalists (usually about a dozen or so in each genre) then sent (again, anonymously) to our final judges.  Final judges play no role in this screening process.  Even after we send finalists’ manuscripts, we ask our judges to set aside the manuscript if they have a strong, personal connection to a writer whose work they’ve recognized. We also strongly urge writers who have close personal ties to judges not to submit to our competition.  Please do not write to or contact final judges in any way.  If you have any questions, contact the journal’s editorial staff.  Review of finalists usually concludes in May.  Final judges usually make their decisions in June.  If you included a SASE, we will send the official announcement of winners in July, when we will also list winners and finalists on our web site.  Other public announcements of winners will also appear later in the AWP Writer’s Chronicle and Poets & Writers.

 

The 2010 Arts & Letters Prizes Judges have not yet been selected; check back soon!

 

About the Arts & Letters Poetry and Creative Nonfiction Prizes

The Arts & Letters/Rumi Prize in Poetry is named for the great Persian poet, Jelaluddin Rumi, in honor of our friend and colleague Susan Atefat-Peckham, and her son Cyrus, who died tragically in a February 2004 car accident. Also in their memory, a generous gift from Susan’s parents, Bahram and Fari Atefat have endowed the Arts & Letters/Susan Atefat Prize in Creative Nonfiction, in honor of Susan and their grandson Cyrus.

 

Of Iranian heritage, Susan was a deeply spiritual woman who loved Rumi’s poetry.  Her National Poetry Series Award-winning book That Kind of Sleep opens with this quote from Rumi:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If anyone asks you

how the perfect satisfaction

of all our sexual wanting

will look, lift your face

and say,

                Like this.

 

When someone mentions the gracefulness

of the nightsky, climb up on the roof

and dance and say,

                              Like this?

 

If anyone want to know what “spirit” is,

or what “God’s fragrance” means,

lean your head toward him or her.

Keep your face there close.

                                            Like this.

 

From The Essential Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

 

Learn more about Susan’s life and her work with Arts & Letters.

 

Since our first prize competition in 1999, winners have each received $1,000 and publication in Arts & Letters.  In addition, we have published many works by authors selected by our final judges for “honorable mention” (these authors received our normal contributor’s honorarium of $10 per published page, minimum of $50).  In addition, each year we bring our winners to campus where they receive their prizes and meet the community at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville.  In the fall, we celebrate our fiction and poetry winners, who also read from their work. In the spring, we celebrate our drama and creative nonfiction winners for programs featuring their prize-winning works.  Arts & Letters pays for domestic airfare, lodging, and all hospitality for the winners while they are on campus. 

 

All prizes are privately funded and contestants’ reading fees are never used for prizes.  U.S. contestants receive a $15 one-year subscription to the journal (2 issues), which is exactly the cost of the reading fee. (See prize guidelines for International submissions to the competition.)  Read Martin Lammon’s Poets & Writers article “One Editor’s Take on Clean Competition.”

 

To help support funding for the prizes, we began the Arts & Letters Endowments, administered by the editor of Arts & Letters and the Georgia College & State University Foundation.  If you would like to help us support the prizes, please visit our endowment page.

 

 

 

 

 

Arts & Letters

Campus Box 89

Georgia College & State University

Milledgeville, GA  31061

(478) 445-1289

al@gcsu.edu

 

 

Arts & Letters accepts submissions from September 1 to March 1 (postmark deadlines).  For complete information, see submission guidelines.