June 13th, 2011 / 3:26 pm
Contests
Lily Hoang
Contests
Got a manuscript? Enter a contest.
Les Figues Press is having a contest. Find out more about here. 1k + publication. All entrants get a free TrenchArt book of their choice. And there are many good choices.
Tags: Les Figues Press
Lily? I stole a copy of Mathew Timmons’ The New Poetics (Les Figues Press, 2010) at Brian Ang’s apartment.
Thanks for posting this, sounds really cool.
I love when you guys post contest info–wish the contest posts appeared more often. I entered the last one, the ASF Short Shorts. I’ll find out on Wednesday that I lost, woo.
Sorry Lily, but publishers that do this are lame.
Hey, not trying to start an argument or anything, but just wondering why you think that. Is it only the submission fee part you’re against, or the whole idea of publishers having open submission periods, or…?
I did used to hear (probably in Writer’s Digest or something) that you should never pay to have your work read, but I guess what I decided with the ASF contest was that I could just consider the small fee a donation to a worthy publication, and that I could either be paying a submission fee or a literary agent. I dunno, I mean, I still do get the “no submission fees” idea in principle, though. I’m probably too inexperienced to have an opinion about it overall.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/poetry-book-contests_b_858819.html
I want to submit something over the summer… But reading these comments has made me cynical and old.
That article talks about how publication should not be decided “by committee,” but I don’t see what that has to do with contests, necessarily. Are you trying to say that every publisher that uses contests decides by committee, and every publisher that doesn’t use contests lets individual editors singlehandedly pick which books to publish?
Also, all that part about judges picking people they knew… Wouldn’t that just be true of a badly-run contest? Aren’t most contest submissions blind?Also, again, it seems way more cost-prohibitive to have to hire a literary agent than to pay a small contest fee, so isn’t limiting writers to the old literary agent system a lot more pretentious and cynical than charging a fee?
It just seems like tearing down contests in general, instead of corrupt publications, is misguided.
God, re-reading that article, it’s even more ridiculous. (Probably what I should have expected from HuffPo.)
It simultaneously criticizes contests for not actually being blind, while also saying “Is this the best way to discover new poetry talent in the country? What happens to editorial judgment, consistent aesthetic vision, commitment to particular values, building a movement, advocating for a particular style, and creating a critical mass of new writing if the contest model is allegedly based in “impartiality” and “blindness”–in other words, pretends to be the exemplar of democracy, egalitarianism, and disavowal of values? ”
(And there’s no reason given that a publication wouldn’t select contest winners who represent just that “consistent aesthetic vision/particular style.”)
It also simultaneously criticizes contests for spending the contest fee on name-brand screeners, and for when “lowly MFA candidates” are the screeners. etc etc
I’m not saying all contests are great, but I don’t think this article at all answers why publishers that do contests are “lame.”
Hi Ben, I hope the comments here haven’t made you too cynical or old. Les Figues is a cool press. They’re worth the support, and they take good care of their authors. I say this from personal experience.
Furthermore, I can also say, from personal experience, that these contests aren’t just name games. In 2006, when I had maybe a handful of online publications, I won the Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest. I know “bigger” names submitted mss. Chiasmus had no stake in me, no personal anything for me. (The co-winner for that year had even fewer connections and publications.) A few years ago, I judged the second Un-Doing the Novel Contest. I had friends who submitted work for it. But I chose Kate Zambreno’s O Fallen Angel. Whereas we may know Kate’s name now, back when I was the judge, I hadn’t heard of Kate at all. I’d heard of many of the names attached to the other mss I read. But I chose the ms I thought fit the press’s aesthetics most, the one that challenged form and content most. I didn’t read “blindly,” but I didn’t need to. To be fair, I guess not every judge is like me. (I’ve also submitted to FC2’s contests a couple of times. I know almost everyone on their editorial board, and my ms never goes far, even with that “inside connection.” So, there’s that experience too.)
Furthermore, yes, writers, especially our kind of writer, don’t have a lot of money, but these small presses don’t either. A press like Les Figues takes a lot of care with their books. They are beautiful objects, every single one of them. Things like care and dedication take money, and contests generate money. They support us by publishing good work. We should support them too. This isn’t Glimmer Train or anything like that. This is a small, independently run press. Or, maybe I’m just old and not as wise as Anis Shivani.
Hi Sarah, Sorry to hear you feel this way.
If I had the choice between running a contest that has a reading fee, which would facilitate the funds to publish other books (because let’s be clear here: small presses aren’t money making ventures. Small press publish books out of love. Go ahead: ask anyone who runs a small press or journal what their profits were for last year, and they’d probably tell you they’re in the hole, or, at the very best, they broke even.), or not publishing any books for the next calendar, I’d run a contest. Even if it means that some people think I’m “lame” for it.
I’ve had a good experience with Les Figues, both as a reader of their books and a writer whose book they published. When I heard about this contest, I thought it would be a good opportunity for a lot of the audience here at HTML. By all means, I understand your disdain for contests. I suggest you don’t submit to them. Any of them.
Many writers DO publish their first books through routes other than contests. I’m not one of them. I wouldn’t suggest anyone submit to the Missouri Review’s contest or anything like that. But the Les Figues Contest, it’s something entirely different.
What’d you think of it, Janey? It’s a damn pretty book.
Lily. I like your response very much. I just wish presses were honest. /If you want to submit a ms. to us then the least you can do is buy a book from us. Help support us./ That’s all.
‘My Tranquil War and Other Poems was a semifinalist for the 2010 Noemi Book Award for Poetry, and a finalist for the 2010 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award.’
Very interesting. :) Thanks.
lily, can i ask what the difference is between the les figues contest and MR’s contest? is it just that MR is a big journal? from what i can tell, both contests are set up pretty much the same way–pay a fee, get a product (a book from les figues or a subscription from MR), and get either a rejection or a check and publication. MR’s entry fee is even lower. they also have a larger payout for the winner and their subscriptions cost more than a book from les figues. i imagine MR gets a lot more submissions of course.
i’m not saying i disagree with you or trying to start an argument. just trying to further understand the way people think about contests.
tinyurl.com/3p4aqqw
mcaf.ee/b5e0c
did you investigate the contest or publisher before commenting? the article you linked deals with primarily with large, university or corporate funded presses.
since people don’t usually buy books nearly as much as they want people to read their work, presses that are totally independent literally struggle to even cover printing costs. if you gain funding from a university affiliation, you often lose control over what you can publish. there’s no simple solution.
the huff article is flawed in my opinion, because it treats contests as an isolated phenomenon, rather than part of an overall system that is as corrupt as any system that wields considerable power. the huff article reminded me of all those terrible, redundant essays that call mfa programs “cash cows” as if the entire university system wasn’t a “cash cow.” (look at the board of directors for most multinational corporations/private banks and then look at university presidents–there is considerable overlap. the president of brown sat on goldman sachs and two other corporations boards for a decade. same goes for nearly every top twenty university). what i mean–no one thing is corrupting literature generally, or book publishing specifically. if contests can be corrupted, so can any other aspect of the production of literature, from acceptance to universities, to mentorships, to publication, to hiring committees, to grants, etc. all you can do is do the research and question any one in a position of power, from obama to jorie graham.
did you investigate the contest or publisher before commenting? the article you linked deals with primarily with large, university or corporate funded presses.
since people don’t usually buy books nearly as much as they want people to read their work, presses that are totally independent literally struggle to even cover printing costs. if you gain funding from a university affiliation, you often lose control over what you can publish. there’s no simple solution.
the huff article is flawed in my opinion, because it treats contests as an isolated phenomenon, rather than part of an overall system that is as corrupt as any system that wields considerable power. the huff article reminded me of all those terrible, redundant essays that call mfa programs “cash cows” as if the entire university system wasn’t a “cash cow.” (look at the board of directors for most multinational corporations/private banks and then look at university presidents–there is considerable overlap. the president of brown sat on goldman sachs and two other corporations boards for a decade. same goes for nearly every top twenty university). what i mean–no one thing is corrupting literature generally, or book publishing specifically. if contests can be corrupted, so can any other aspect of the production of literature, from acceptance to universities, to mentorships, to publication, to hiring committees, to grants, etc. all you can do is do the research and question any one in a position of power, from obama to jorie graham.
Did you mean to reply to me, because I was arguing against the HuffPo article, saying that submission fees aren’t evil, saying that the issue of writing being chosen by committee is separate from the issue of contests in general, etc. In other words, “if contests can be corrupted, so can any other aspect of the production of literature, from acceptance to universities, to mentorships, to publication, to hiring committees, to grants, etc.”
So I really don’t get why you posted all that in reply to me, instead of to Sarah who was the one saying “publishers that do this are lame,” but maybe it was an accident.
i hit the most “recent” reply button in the thread so it would appear last in the list so it would appear after all the comments. i am not super tech savvy. however, i was just coming here to delete the comment anyway as i began to feel that the comment itself was pointless. and i don’t submit to contests.
Oh I see, no problem. I wish we could delete posts on here, all we can do is edit it to just say “[deleted]” or something.
It’s funny because even though I was on here in defense of contests, I just lost one, and I immediately thought of this thread and the Huffpo article and started Googling for connections between the publication and the multi-publication MFAers it selected as winners. But then I took a deep breath and it’s like… no, they probably just hated my stories. I feel like shit either way.
[…] while back, I posted a link to Les Figues Press’s very first book contest. Whereas all I did was post the submission […]
[…] while back, I posted a link to Les Figues Press’s very first book contest. Whereas all I did was post the submission […]