I don’t envy the judge. With so many excellent manuscripts in hand, just getting down to the long list of finalists was a major effort. If I had my way, this list could easily have had a couple hundred names on it – there were so many manuscripts that caught our eye, spoke to us, and changed the way we viewed the world. There were so many applicants this year who really had a great voice and a wonderful command of the craft of writing.
But, eventually, we have to get down to just three authors. A grand prize winner and two runner-ups. A few weeks ago, I posted the rough timeline for the overall process. We’re still pretty much on track. In fact, we may beat the clock and be able to announce the winners in mid-September.
So, without further chatter, here is the Long List (in no particular order). The next blog post will feature the “short list” of roughly 20-25 names.
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Sandra Hunter: Trip Wires
Solveig Eggerz: Sigga
Erni Johnson: Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid
Laurence Klavan: DNA: The Story of the Muth Co.
Diane Josefowicz: Guardians & Saints
Stephanie Harper: Wesley Yorstead Goes Outside
B. Stufflebeam: A Town Called Riddle
Sam Ritzenberg: Tap 4 Times
Allison Green: At Fifty: Essays
Kelly Kiehl: Bad Love
Jon Chopan: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Jerome Gold: Hard Lives: Children in Prison, and After
Sonja Coppenbarger: The Banshee of Machrae
Michael Levitin: Disposable Man
Michele Swide: Melanie Loves Edith
Lourdes Rosado: Riding the Number 7
Marisa Clark: Hermosa
Kate Wisel: Driving in Cars with Homeless Men
Brad Windhauser: An Appropriate Amount of Change: A Story Collection
Deborah McCutchen: The Whale Road
Elise Atchison: Crazy Mountain
Dana Kroos: The Wayfinder’s Guide
Caroline Manring: Some Trace More Permanent
Nathan Long: Two Tales, Some Stories, and a Yarn
Matthew Levine: Hollow
Joy Lanzendorfer: What Happened In The Woods
Ryane Nicole Granados: The Aves
Susanne Davis: The Appointed Hour
Kathryn Trueblood: The No-Tell Hotel
Elizabeth Lantz: Baking Bread
Susan Isaak Lolis: The Bootlegger’s Husband
Sandra Jensen: Ten Virtuous Acts
Andrea Askowitz: Attention Whore
Ginny Fite: Stronger in Heaven
Joan Schweighardt: River Promises
Michael Orbach: The Last Jews of Long Island
Catherine Klatzker: You Will Never Be Normal
Perry Glasser: La vie et la mort de Pierre Doucet
Craig O’Hara: One Thirty Five South
Brice Bogle: Losing Deseret
Doug Crandell: Tornado Season
Ashley Barsody: Who We Are
Scott MacGregor: Tunnel To Hell~The Lake Erie Tunnel Disasters~Tales of Heroism and Tragedy: A Graphic Novel
Dwaine Rieves: Shirtless Men
Wendy Fox: If the Ice Had Held
Andrea Shaw: The Ministry of Other Things
Julie Dalton: The Poachers’ Code
Ross Wilcox: Golden Gate Jumper Survivors Society: Stories
Cathy Cruise: Love, Faith, and Other Stories
Amalia Gladhart: A Book of Rice
Ian Orti: Royal Mountain City Fugue
Justin Gardiner: Beneath the Shadow: Legacy and Longing in the Antarctic
Brooke Larson: Pleasing Tree
JoeAnn Hart: Scofieldtown Road: A 70’s Tale of Race, Death, Love, and Real Estate
Betsy Bernfeld: The Journal of Henry David Tarantula
Angela Mitchell: Unnatural Habitats
Anthony Mariani: Little Man: A Semi-True Story
Lynn Miller: The Unmasking
Jonathan Escoffery: If I Survive You
Alyssa Metcalfe: Street
Jacqueline Lyons: Breakdown of Poses
Liz Egan: Situational Awareness and Other Stories
Laine Cunningham: As a Songbird Trails Its Mate
Manreet Someshwar: The Radiance of a Thousand Suns
Lorien Megill: Missed Connections
Jamie Lyn Smith: Untitled
Sarah Townsend: Inverted Skin: A Memoir of a Postpartum Psychosis
Irshad Abdal-Haqq: Dash! and Other Stories
Josie Sigler: The Galaxie and Other Rides
Hadley Moore: Not Dead Yet
David Armstrong: Small Lives Cross-Referenced for Your Convenience
Michele Berger: Doll Seed and Other Stories
Colleen Rich: Things You Won’t Tell Your Therapist: Stories
Christina Milletti: Choke Box: a Fem-Noir
John Gifford: The Sharks of Al Jubail
Brian Heston: Billy Penn’s Hat
Alexandria Constantinova Szeman: M is for Munchers
Miles Wilson: Fire Season
Thanks for the opportunity to comment. Definitely trying not to take it to heart, but I must say that it seems odd to me that a book as substantial and actually distinguished as mine could not have made it even as far as the Long List. Makes me wonder whether the judge actually read it all the way through, if at all. Eight hundred books and only one judge? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Hello Mary,
Thanks for your comment. Judging a book (whether you’re a contest judge or a browser in the bookstore) is a very subjective process, of course. It’s really not possible to figure out why a judge picks one book over another book. In the end, the judge is making a selection based off of their particular taste. This is how we all select the books we enjoy, I think!
In terms of processing (reading) manuscripts, I’ll use myself as an example: I receive about 200 solicitations for the publishing wing every week and usually get through them all that week. When you’re in the book business, speed is definitely the key. When I interview judges, I lean on this fact. They know going in that they have to clear a large block of time.
There is a preliminary judging process. We review manuscripts as they come in to make sure there are no technical glitches, potential conflicts such as a personal relationship with the judge, or glaring grammatical/style/editorial/subject matter problems with the manuscript (there are many examples from the last 17 years of the SFWP contest that might be better suited for a blog post). During this phase (and our contest runs for roughly 8 months), the judge has access and we don’t discourage preliminary reading. So some manuscripts may have been reviewed as they arrived over the first half of 2017.
July and August also tend to be quiet months in the publishing industry, so there’s the opportunity to spend a couple hundred hours reading away! I try to time the contest to end in the summer for just that reason. (Speaking of hours spent reading, the judge is not required to read the entire manuscript if he makes a decision early on. This, again, is where the subjective aspect of judging comes into play.)
It’s a tremendous amount of work but, after 17 years, I’m able to keep everything moving quickly and efficiently. I interview judges during the selection process to gauge their comfort level and expected free time, and they always get about a year’s warning to block off their calendars for some hard core reading.
Mary,
Face it, our books sucked. Mine was a 400-page erotic thriller about zombie turtles that live on the moon. It was called Dark Side of the Shell. I mean, how does that not crack the top 100?!?
I totally went right to Submittable to search for that entry, Nigel! A little disappointed that it doesn’t exist…
If only our books were as good as we think they are, we’d all have a Pulitzer.
Hey, I”ve been entering writing contests forever. In fact, I’ve come in finalist or better in close to 180 competitions – 27 wins with 19 second places. As much as I’ve been recognized, my work has been overlooked many more times than not. Subjective indeed. My only complaint when I must lick my wounds when rejected is that I get no feedback. I would like to know why the reader didn’t advance my work. Was it grammar? Was the plot not strong enough? I think you get the picture. And I think a quote from Derek Jeter is appropriate here. He once said once, “There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do and I believe that.” And so do I. Being rejected more times than not, and being a Temple University Screenplay Judge for a couple of years, I’m convinced there’s an abundance of talent out there. So…keep on working hard. You’ll get there.
Thank you, Andrew, for such positive and soecific feedback, despite my book not making the long list. I am nevertheless grateful for your words and will of course persevere with the writing. It is not as though I have any choice in the matter. Will take your suggestions and try your recommended strategy. Thank you. It’s a tough job that you have, and necessarily, subjective. Because life is that way too. I remain grateful. More power.