EP/UWB Contest

Essay Press / University of Washington Bothell MFA 2019 Book Contest

Essay Press and the University of Washington Bothell’s MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics Program are happy to announce a collaborative book contest, judged by Ching-In Chen and Jill Magi.

We’re particularly excited to read manuscripts that extend or challenge the formal possibilities of prose, including but not limited to: lyric essays and prose poems or poetics; experimental biography and autobiography; innovative approaches to journalism, interdisciplinary historiography, criticism, scholarship and philosophy. Simultaneous submissions, multiple submissions, collaborative manuscripts, digital and hybridized text/art manuscripts are all welcome.
 
The contest winner will receive book publication by Essay Press (including author book copies and royalties), and travel expenses for invited readings on the Bothell campus and in downtown Seattle.
 
The ideal manuscript will run roughly 70-200 pages, though no manuscript will be denied consideration on account of being too short or too long. We will consider all submitted manuscripts for additional publishing possibilities. Selections will be made and announced by March 2020.
 
The reading fee is $20, or $25 to receive a copy of a previous or forthcoming Essay Press book, or one of the winning contest books.

Submissions are open from October 15 to November 30.

ABOUT THE JUDGES

Ching-In Chen is author of The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009); recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017; 2018 Lambda Literary Award winner for Transgender Poetry); how to make black paper sing (speCt! Books, 2019); and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (forthcoming from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs and a Finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat and Imagining America and are part of Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. They are Assistant Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.
 
 

Jill Magi works in text, image, and textile. Her sixth book, SPEECH, was published by Nightboat Books in September 2019. Jill has blogged for the Poetry Foundation, written weekly commentaries for Jacket2 on “a textile poetics,” and curated a series of poetic engagements with the Wagner Labor Archive at NYU for Essay Press. Jill teaches in the visual arts and literature/creative writing programs at NYU Abu Dhabi where she is currently working on a curatorial project called “The Textile Imaginary” for the NYUAD Gallery. With Shamma Al Bastaki and Sarah Al Mehairi, she is a founding member JARA Collective, a UAE-based publishing effort.
 

ABOUT EP / THE UWB MFA

Essay Press is dedicated to publishing artful, innovative and culturally relevant prose that extends or challenges the formal protocols of nonfiction.
 
University of Washington Bothell’s MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics is unique for its emphasis on poetics, encouraging a cross-genre and multi-media curriculum, bringing together nationally and internationally renowned faculty including visual artists and creative writers, and giving students the freedom to pursue their second year as residency or non-residency students, or a hybrid of both.