JULY, 2019—BULLETIN #149

Those squinty little girls are us. You can see that Susan was already reading, not quite three years old. We're back to squinting now after three decades of intense reading, but it has been a relatively small price for all the glorious stories we've read!

Susan and Linda on the steps of our farmhouse, Dushore, PA, 1961

For these last two categories, writers have sent the most powerful stories we could have hoped for, as though this were their last chance to commit themselves to diving their deepest. It's not your last chance! Although Glimmer Train is no longer accepting stories, we urge you to keep up this momentum—throw your whole self into every story, just as you've done these last few months. Concern yourself primarily with giving full life to your characters' stories, rather than obsessing about publication, and you'll likely create your best work.

It was a major challenge choosing the winning stories from so many beauties, but we did, and our final contest results—Short Story Award for New Writers and Family Matters—follow! All six winning stories will be presented in our final issue of Glimmer Train.

Results of the March/April 2019 Short Story Award for New Writers

Winners have been contacted, as have the Top 25 and Honorable Mentions.

• 1st place goes to Rachael Uwada Clifford for "What the Year Will Swallow." This will be her first publication.
• 2nd place goes to Douglas Kiklowicz for "I Used to Be Funny." This will be his first fiction publication.
• 3rd place goes to Ashley Alliano for "Do Something." This will be her first publication.

Results of the March/April 2019 Family Matters

Winners have been contacted, as have the Top 25 and Honorable Mentions.

• 1st place goes to Robin Halevy for "Bright Ideas for Residential Lighting." This will be her first publication.
• 2nd place goes to Arthur Klepchukov for "The Unfinished Death of My Grandfather."
• 3rd place goes to Christa Romanosky for "Ways to Light the Water on Fire."

Essays in this bulletin:

Rachael Uwada Clifford: I start with an image, or language around an image, that simply enchants me—that is downright arresting in its clarity and in its musicality. Sometimes I will carry it around for days and days, or even years. (more)

Robin Halevy: It demands that you get out of your own needy, wishful, rejection-fearing way and become impersonal and ruthless about your work. Which is, of course, exactly what you must do to make it the best it can be. (more)

Siamak Vossoughi: You might be a fool for thinking of yourself as a writer anyway, but to be a writer in the language of the country threatening war on the country where you were born, that takes a special kind of foolishness. I'd put that foolishness up against anybody's. (more)

Andra Nicolescu: I'm reminded of being in graduate school and delving into the embattled sub-field of Alltagsgeschichte. That dreamlike compound word means everyday history, denotes inquiries into the micro-, so-called ordinary experiences, the problematics of daily life. In short, the stuff of fiction. (more)

Cat Seto: Some psychologists cast off writer's block to be a myth, a self-selected pathos. Writer's block is not an affliction, it is a choice, an old professor once said. Deconstructed, in layman's terms, this simply means lazy and undisciplined to me. (more)

Kent Wascom: It just so happens that my people, or some of them, were Vandals. My grandmother's family name, Fandal, is apparently derived from that tribe, which in the fifth century spread across Europe into Spain, North Africa, and at the height of their power sacked Rome itself. (more)

Monica Wood: The poison beneath the land echoes the poison beneath the family relationships. The context of land reinforces every lie and betrayal the characters inflict on one another. Not all contexts are this large. The breadth of the story should dictate the breadth of the context. (more)

► NOTE: We've just posted our Close-Ups—you won't want to miss them. And, as you know, the bulletin is free and meant to inform and to promote writers. Feel free to forward this bulletin to your writer friends. (We never share your info.) We plan to maintain our bulletin archives through 2020; they include many valuable essays by writers—we encourage you to take in their generous contributions. They're archived here.

We will send you our final bulletin in early October when the last issues of Glimmer Train Stories and Writers Ask are ready to ship!

Warm regards and best wishes,

Discovering, publishing, and paying emerging writers since 1990.

One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train continues to actively champion emerging writers. The magazine is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, New Stories from the Midwest, the O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, New Stories from the Southwest, Best American Short Stories, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.