The other day an author of mine asked, "Do you ever submit things to the Pushcart Prize?" My answer--internally, not to the author--was, "Guh?" Of course, I had heard of The Pushcart Prize, but hadn't ever looked into it. To quote from the source:
The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of our annual collections.
Like all of these things, my brain put forth a tiny amount of effort in trying to determine how Pushcart picked its contents. I naively wondered why they hadn't contacted me about things I'd published.
Well duh, for the same reason I don't contact everyone on the planet who might be writing a story to see if they want to send it to me: it's just not feasible, and not their responsibility. It's up to me to nominate work for their Prize. Which I've done this year.
Of course, the deadline (postmark, not arrival) is December 1, which is tomorrow. And the book is set to be published in December, so it's likely that the contents of the book are already set. So, in effect, there's no point in sending in my submissions this late as they have no chance of getting in. Some people have complained about this fact calling the whole process a sham.
However, I know that putting together a 'best of' (which is essentially what the Pushcart is) isn't necessarily the smoothest process in the world. Sometimes it's tough to get reprint permission. In this case, since everything is starting small press, that shouldn't be a problem...but who knows? I feel less worried about the process having chatted with Pushcart editor Bill Henderson yesterday. Maybe he's just really affable, but it felt like anything I sent would actually be considered for inclusion in the anthology.
Regardless, I put my nominations (I can make up to six) in the mail today. A whole day early! We'll see what happens.
3 comments:
The book is publishing in December? I wish I'd known that, because I don't understand their December 1st deadline at all, then, and I would have tried to get my own nominations in earlier.
If Amazon is to be believed, the book will be available on December 10. I don't see how a nomination that reaches them on December 1 has any shot of making the final cut. And I don't think it would be eligible for the following year's selection.
Out of curiosity, are there other prizes/awards you regularly nominate EV stories or poems for?
Like I said, it's unlikely that anything getting in this late will really be considered. But who knows?
I typically try to nominate for anything that I'm made aware of. For example, I nominate works for the Speculative Literature Foundation Fountain Award, which carries a cash prize of $1,000.
This year, I nominated stuff for WSFA Small Press award (this was the first year) and Edd Vick's story made the final ballot:
http://wsfasmallpressaward.org/The_History.php
I always send the zine to the World Fantasy judges as well as all the year's best editors.
And I nominate stories for everything that I'm eligible to nominate awards for, like the Hugos and the World Fantasy Awards.
In fact, I'm looking for someone to help me coordinate what all the awards are and who all the year's best are so that I can make sure I've sent stuff to everyone. Someone who would do a better job than me of keeping track of all the places to send stuff to, send the stuff out, and keep a list somewhere of where things have gone. Any takers?
I think the book in December 2008 contains winners from April 2007. Unless I've got the whole thing completely wrong. I'm not sure. If those in this December's issue of the anthology are winners from the nominations sent in around Nov/Dec this year then I fail to see how they can look judiciously at all the entries (all 8,000 or more).
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