Essay Press / University of Washington Bothell MFA
2021 Book Contest
Submissions are open from November 1 to December 31.
Essay Press and the University of Washington Bothell’s MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics Program are hosting a 2022 Essay Book Contest to be judged by Amaranth Borsuk.
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 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 April 2022.
Along with book publication by Essay Press, the contest winner will receive an award of $1,000 and a visit to University of Washington Bothell.
The reading fee is $20, or $25 to receive a copy of a selected Essay Press book, for those in the United States. For those living internationally, if you would like to enter the contest and receive an EP book, please contact Meagan Wilson at m.essaypress@gmail.com.
About the judge
Amaranth Borsuk is the author of the poetry collections Pomegranate Eater and Handiwork. She works at the intersection of print and digital media with an emphasis on artists’ books, installation, and digital/ print hybrids. Her collaborative books include Abra, an artist’s book and iOS app created with Kate Durbin and Ian Hatcher; As We Know, an erasure collaboration with Andy Fitch; and Between Page and Screen, a book of augmented-reality poems, created with Brad Bouse. Her recently published volume The Book, from MIT Press, traces the interrelationship of form and content in the book’s development, bridging book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell where she directs the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics.
About the University at Washington, Bothell MFA
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.