Texas Review Press announces annual contest winners

The Texas Review Press, a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium housed at Sam Houston State University, recently announced its annual competition winners.

Each year Texas Review Press offers four international and one regional writing competition of previously unpublished writing in the categories of best poetry chapbook, best full-length book of poetry, best book of stories or shot novel, best novella, and southern poetry breakthrough.

This year the press received 138 entries into the competitions.

According to Paul Ruffin, distinguished professor of English at SHSU and head of the Texas Review Press, manuscripts are mailed into the Press for review and become “blind” submissions before going before a panel of judges.

“This means that when the manuscript arrives in our office, the title page with author’s name is removed, and the manuscript is assigned a number. We do not want any of our judges at any stage to know whose manuscript is being considered. This is the way we achieve total fairness in judging,” explained Dr. Ruffin.

“We send the manuscripts out to a network of judges for initial winnowing and then forward eight to twelve finalists to recognized writers for final judging.”

Past winners for the international contest have included individuals from Great Britain, Japan, the Czech Republic, Kenya and of course, the United States.

The winners for the 2012 competition were:

Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize for best poetry chapbook: David Lanier Lost & Found (Santa Fe, NM)

X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize for best full-length book of poetry: Jeff Worley A Little Luck (Lexington, Ky)

George Garrett Fiction Prize for best book of stories or short novel: Tim Parrish The Jumper (New Haven, Conn.)

Clay Reynolds Novella Prize for best novella: Adam Berlin Members of This Club (New York, NY)

Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: Erin Ganaway The Waiting Girl (Atlanta, Ga)