Looking back at past contest winners

Vickie Weaver was the first winner of Leapfrog’s Fiction Contest in 2009. Her novel Billie Girl, published in 2010, brings a unique perspective to Southern Gothic literature. We asked her to reflect about her experience as a contest winner.

When I was 44 years old, I was the worst bank teller ever. I’d had several jobs since high school (nothing close to a career), jobs I’d taken because they were close to home and my children. That was my choice, with no regrets. But one day I realized that my two sons were grown, and that I needed to make a change for myself. Since junior high school I’d assumed I’d be a writer, but I’d done nothing about it. At age 44, I enrolled in college, and four years later, in 2000, earned a BA in English with a minor in Creative Writing and a minor in Women’s Studies. Still I didn’t write. I wondered about grad school, though I considered at 51 I shouldn’t spend that much more on my education. I am grateful that my husband didn’t agree. In 2003, I applied to Spalding University’s Low Residency MFA in Writing Program. I studied fiction, and graduated in 2005. I published my first short story soon after.

My mother’s family lived in eastern (rural) Kentucky (near Middlesboro), and later, near Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. As a city girl from Indiana, I felt I was being punished when we spent summer vacations there (1950s and 1960s). No sidewalks or night lights, no Beatles on the radio—yes, Dolly Parton sang to us instead. Dirt roads, rattlesnakes, and a grandpa who sold moonshine. As much as I disdained that life as a child, when I began to write, the South came out of my soul and onto the page. I had no idea that I had been carrying those memories next to my heart; it repairs me to write of the butter churn, warm nested eggs, stack cake, rolled cigarettes, the store man, a tin tub bath in the kitchen. Love and work and prayer and more worries than laughter. Those people, those times, are a part of all my stories in some way. I honor them.

Stories come too from old photographs—my family’s, or anyone’s, really. I connect with the eyes looking out at the world, and I give voice to what they’ve seen. The theme appears out of the work. After the writing, I realized the theme of Billie Girl is that we all deserve understanding, kindness, and respect. Of course, the characters convey this theme in rather unconventional ways.

When I completed my novel (in 2008), like any writer, I wanted it published. Creating anything else was set aside for months as I worked toward this goal. I queried agents (via email, snail mail and at conferences that offered pitch sessions). I submitted to small presses and publishing houses that did not require agent submissions. I entered literary contests. The key for me was to try different approaches simultaneously. I did not wait for rejection to submit again and again. Hours of internet research for guidelines to prepare my submission and/or query properly for each source, and checking out the listings in each issue of POETS & WRITERS gave me several options. It was exhausting. Before I could land an agent, I won Leapfrog’s contest in 2009. So for me, success came about with common sense, “elbow grease,” and determination. (I have paused the agent search for now.)

Since then, I’ve had several short stories published (both before and after Billie Girl); I’ve won and placed in contests. For a complete list of my work, please visit my website, www.vickieweaver.com.

As her website states, Vickie currently lives and writes from the middle of a Midwest hayfield. Keep your eyes open for her newest short story in the Twisted Road Southern Gothic Revival Anthology later this year. 

Leapfrog takes on Buffalo’s Small Press Book Fair!

I think everyone who attended the event would agree that this weekend’s book fair was a success! Dozens of Leapfrog books were distributed along with tons of information on our press. It was inspiring to see the support Buffalo has for small publishing companies like us along with self-published authors and other crafters.

Here’s the beautiful building that hosted the fair & intern, Leo, poking around

 

our colorful table:

past & present Leapfrog interns looking at books & getting eaten by birds:

food trucks!!:

Our splendid raffle prizes:

The Spring 2015 issue of Crossborder approaches!

Rejoice! The spring 2015 issue of Crossborder is coming out in March, and will feature great writing from Rachel Luria, Aaron Tillman, Dustin M. Hoffman, Mark Spitzer, Sohrab Homi Fracis, Gabriele Glang, Michael Casey and Terrance Manning, Jr.

In the meantime, check out some links to their work to help get you acquainted. Consider it your literary warmup.

• Rachel Luria:
  • Read her great essay “A State of Feeling” at Phoebe.
  • And then read about what you can steal from “A State of Feeling”
• Aaron Tillman
  • Check out his story “How Do You Mind the Symptoms of a World So Black and Mysterious and Cold?” at Burrow Press.
  • Read an interview with him about the story.
  • (And if you’re feeling adventurous, try “Acknowledg[e]ments” at the NewerYork.)
• Dustin M. Hoffman
  • Read his story “Can-Picking” over at Phoebe. 
  • If you liked that, head over to his website for links to more of his work.
• Mark Spitzer
  • Read some poetry at Mad Hatters’ Review.
  • And an interview at The Big Other.
• Sohrab Homi Fracis
  • Read an interview at Literary Kicks.
  • Read a great review of Ticket to Minto at Kirkus.
•  Terrance Manning, Jr.
  • Read his story “Andretti in the El Camino” (Winner of the 2013 Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers) at Boulevard. 

Order back issues of Crossborder, read excerpts and subscribe on our website.

Call for manuscript submissions!

Leapfrog Press is currently reading submissions for our annual fiction contest. We’re proud to welcome author Mark Brazaitis (The Incurables, Truth Poker) as this year’s finalist judge. Check out our submission guidelines, then send us your work.

Once you’ve done that, take a few minutes to check out some recent contest winners.

The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles, Gregory Hill (2014 first place winner)

(review of Hill’s previous novel East of Denver)

Going Anywhere, David Armstrong (2013 first place winner)

(review at The Literary Review, “Declarations” at Narrative)

Being Dead in South Carolina, Jacob White (2012 first place winner)

(interview at Crossborder, review at Publishers Weekly)

Loss of an author — Farley Mowat

Canadian writer Farley Mowat has died. Another great loss for the world and for the environment.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/05/07/farley_mowat_acclaimed_canadian_author_dead_at_92.html

Short Stories — For FREE!

Our short stories are now free online! Bookslinger comes preloaded with short stories from independent publishers around the world. Every week we let fly a free story from one of our award-winning publishers. Available on iTunes.

Just out:

“Our Big Game” from “Immanence of God in the Tropics” by George Rosen

http://thebookslinger.com/2014/03/21/bookslinger-update-our-big-game/

 

 

 
Recent Leapfrog Press stories available on Bookslinger:

Being Dead in South Carolina – Three Guys One Book Review

In Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Warren Beatty’s John McCabe—with all his roughness and maundering—grumbles, “I got poetry in me,” an assertion with which nobody around him seems to agree. This dialogue kept running through my head while I read Being Dead in South Carolina, Jacob White’s debut short story collection, which begins with a question: “Look. Have you ever tried to right a car you yourself have tumbled?” Immediately, the reader intuits that this narrator is a fuck-up who spends his life attempting to fix disasters that he himself has caused. But check out the way he describes the overturned car: He calls it a “strange articulation of stupidity and rebirth.” He may be a fuck-up, but he got poetry in him.

The majority of the 17 stories in Being Dead are told in a conversational first-person voice. Many of these narrators are ne’er-do-wells whose unremarkable lives dot the American South; in this way, the book’s cover—a cheap-looking couch perched next to shimmering water—is a perfect evocation of its contents. But if you’re a reader fed up with the MFA-workshop-story conventions usually (if not entirely correctly) blamed on Raymond Carver’s brand of “dirty realism,” don’t be turned off.

Consider, again, that opening story—titled “Being Dead in South Carolina”—in which the narrator, after righting the car, ends up at a bar with some friends. By this point, the reader has learned that the narrator was shot in the head years before and has weakened mental faculties as a result. This feels like a familiar redemption story—he will fix his life, connect with other people, etc. etc.—until the final paragraph, which turns in a sudden, frightening direction. “I’ve been born again a thousand times,” the narrator says in the closing moments, “and each time’s scarier than the last.”

Consider, also, “Bethel,” in which the narrator recalls the time that his brother reappeared at the family’s farmhouse after a mysterious (and maybe murderous) six-year absence. The narrator was 12 at that time, and is now a middle-aged trucker. “Bethel” reaches its climax between the 12-year-old narrator and his brother, and then returns to the present, and then keeps going on and on for too many rambling pages, it seems, until it becomes clear that the story is actually about the narrator’s disturbing present-day psychology. White’s endings always force the reader to reconsider what s/he thought the story was about…

“The Days Down Here,” Being Dead’s centerpiece and best story, [is one] in which Hammond and Jean, an old married couple, have moved to South Carolina with their 19-year-old son, Zach. Their days are idyllic, but punctured with brutal flash forwards—“This was only weeks before her cheeks sallowed and sank, before her eyes turned to pitch”—which remind the reader that Jean has cancer and that these days, though idyllic, will be her last. The story becomes a sun-soaked Amour, and White’s poetic flourishes are in fine form. (At dusk, the lake becomes “a floating city of gridlocked boats.”)

Eventually, those problematic prose poems seem like a rehearsal for the climax of “The Days Down Here,” when Hammond, the narrator, describes his son doing something fantastic in a lake while the sun sets and his movements become “smears of shadow.” Here, White’s leap into sustained poetic language feels organic, attached to Hammond’s experience of the world as it becomes heightened and lyrical. This is the best story—maybe the best moment—in Being Dead in South Carolina, and it establishes Jacob White as a fine new writer.

Read the complete review at http://threeguysonebook.com/being-dead-in-south-carolina-by-jacob-white/

An Interview With Author Sarah Gerkensmeyer

Prof. Sarah Gerkensmeyer of SUNY Fredonia has recently published a new short story collection. What You Are Now Enjoying, is an extremely well crafted example of originality in writing.  The work was selected by Stewart O Nan as the winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize.  Crossborder got in touch with Prof. Gerkensmeyer for an interview. Being both a creative writing educator and a newly published author; Sarah’s insight was fantastic!

What inspired you to write your first book?

I think I’ve been working on this book since as far back as I can remember. Although only one of the stories is from when I was in graduate school (and none of them are from before that period) the ideas for strange stories have been spinning around in my mind since I was a little kid. I have always felt like a storyteller, and I have always wanted to write a book. And it only took three and a half decades! I think the most immediate inspiration for this particular book of stories was the birth of my second son. He was a very erratic sleeper as a newborn, and I couldn’t concentrate on smooth, seamless projects. So I started challenging myself to write a draft of a story during each one of his naps. Those super-strange short shorts became the pieces that glued my entire collection together.

How did you come up with the title?

The title was actually a recommendation from my agent. The title story is one of her favorites, and I agreed that it was a neat title for the book as a whole. That story features 20-something women who are just on the verge of getting going in life, and then the book ends with a piece about an elderly couple. So I like how the title alludes to that arc across the entire book.

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

The hardest part of writing is always the writing itself. Thinking up ideas is easy. Taking copious notes about those ideas is easy. Booting up the computer and making a cup of tea is easy. Sharpening pencils and arranging highlighters in rainbow order and then making another cup of tea is easy. But the writing is the hard part. Each time, I have to convince myself that the story will get going if I would only begin. I have to convince myself that I have discoveries to make and that something really will rise up on the page in front of me, like a miracle. Sometimes that’s a very hard kind of convincing to do.

How did you decide on the cover for your book?

My publisher, Autumn House Press, has a wonderful artist on staff who came up with the design. I was so flattered to see her visual representation of the strange stories in my book. Yes–my stories are about women, but it was such a relief not to see pink or ruffles or frilly things. She captured the ghostly essence of some of these stories that even I hadn’t noticed before.

What is the best first step in marketing a book? How can a writer get book reviews, etc.?

The publishing process can be intimidating for first-time authors. Small presses and big presses alike are cutting back on public relations and marketing services, asking authors to take on much of the job of spreading the word about their books. My secret discovery during the release of my book was the book blogging community. These blogs and websites (such as Largehearted Boy, The Quivering Pen, Beatrice, and The Next Best Book Club) are truly amazing advocates for books–and for new authors, especially. I realized that I would feel most comfortable marketing my book in a grass-roots kind of way. I wanted the opportunity to make personal connections and have interesting conversations. Many of the interviews, essays, and book reviews that came out around the release of my book took place on book blogs. I had so much fun, and that’s such an important thing during what can be a nerve-wracking experience.

What genres/authors are you most interested in right now?

Well, I love crossing borders, too! I’m constantly on the lookout for authors who challenge the notions and boundaries between poetry and fiction, fiction and nonfiction, reality and fabulism, etc. I recently read and really enjoyed Maggie Nelson’s book of lyrical essays Bluets. Now I’m excited to check out Anna Joy Springer’s fabulist memoir The Vicious Red Relic, Love. And at this moment I’m devouring Lucy Wood’s story collection Diving Belles. She’s like a British Karen Russell. And she writes about mermaids!

Being Dead in South Carolina Review

A new review from Midwest Book Review!

“Being Dead in South Carolina is a 200 page compendium comprised of seventeen skillfully crafted short stories set in the modern South. The deftly written characters combine with strongly developed and original storylines resulting in a series of literary experiences that the reader will remember long after Bring Dead in South Carolina is finished and set back upon the shelf. Very highly recommended.”

Interview with Lenore Myka, short story contest winner

Lenore Myka, winner of the 2013 Cream City Review Fiction Contest and the 2013 Booth Story Prize, was considerate enough to sit down with one of our interns at Leapfrog Press to discuss the ins and outs of submitting to short story contests. Here she shares her process of reviewing work, sending it off, and advice to writers old and new.

Why did you enter a writing contest?

I enter writing contests for a variety of reasons. Besides the financial incentive (which lots of standard submissions aren’t able to provide), my sense is that writing contests provide an alternative in terms of how works are assessed. Oftentimes, journals have thematic focuses or a specific esthetic they are seeking which might automatically exclude my work from publication. My impression (rightly or wrongly) is that contests are less concerned with theme and esthetic, thus giving works a more objective review. Of course, in the end it still feels as arbitrary as anything else because it is the tastes of sometimes a single judge that determine the results. But I’ve had good luck so far…

Where did you hear about the contest you entered?

It is likewise my perspective that contests draw attention to you as a writer, especially if the journals do a good job of promoting the contest. With the case of the Booth Journal prize, this was certainly true for me. In addition to publishing the story in print, Booth posted it to their website and made announcements on New Pages, FB, etc. As a result, I received a message from an agent interested in seeing more of my work and received a couple of lovely emails from readers, which is always encouraging.

Have you ever submitted the same work to more than one contest at the same time?

I submit to contests the same way I submit standard submissions: a lot and with abandon. This may raise the hackles of some editors, but I do simultaneously submit. Writing is too long, slow, and arduous a process to add waiting for upwards of a year (or forever!) for a response (rejection) from an editor. There have been contests I’ve submitted to and never received a notification announcing the winners; instead I had to do my own sleuthing. I’ve gotten comfortable being aggressive about it, but am also aware this approach isn’t for everyone.

How did you decide which contests to submit work to?

I have a standard list of “target” contests just as I do “target” journals, but I’m always adding new names to both lists. Booth had been on my radar for a short while but Cream City Review came to me through my MFA alumni list; I was happy to be introduced to it not only because of my success but because I think it’s a compelling journal putting some good work out there.

About how long after you submitted work did you hear back from the contest?

In the cases of both Cream City and Booth, I heard within a couple of months that I was a winner. Booth had the added bonus of notifying me that I was a finalist first and providing information detailing when the winner would be awarded. I’m big on communication–the more the better–so I loved this aspect of Booth’s process. In both instances they provided the judge’s feedback and Booth made a personal telephone call to me to give me the good news–a nice added touch in this age electronic communication.

What should one do after they send a submission? Keep writing, take a break, revise their work, etc.?

As with all of my writing, I write first, submit later. My writing isn’t driven by the desire to submit to a specific journal or contest; it’s after I’ve written something that I make decisions about where I might want to submit it. Likewise, writing and submitting (and revising, etc. etc.) happen simultaneously. When my agent began to submit my collection to publishers, a mentor of mine warned me against putting the rest of my writing life on hold lest I get mired in the inevitable rejection of the process and lose sight of why I started writing in the first place. It was sage advice. It’s important for me to keep writing regardless of external validation. While it’s always rejuvenating to get that vote of confidence, and can certainly be a strong motivator (momentum always is), it wasn’t the reason why I put pencil to paper thirty years ago when I first started writing stories. I think it’s dangerous for artists of any kind to hang their hats solely on external validation; ultimately you need to believe in your own work, even when it seems no one else does.

Did you prepare your work months ahead of time with this specific contest in mind, or did you submit closer to the deadline? Do you think it makes a difference?

I don’t think it matters when you submit to contests. I think I just got in under the wire with Cream City’s contest while Booth I submitted well in advance. What matters is what you submit. Is it your strongest work? Have you gone over it again and again, revised and rewritten, edited and rewritten, proofread and rewritten? What people say is true: Submit your best work. Period.

Should one respond to a rejection letter or e-mail?

If you get a personal letter or email of rejection, if there is a name attached, a smidge of encouragement in its contents: Jump on it! The first story I ever had published was the result of such an exchange–an editor rejecting my work but asking me to send more. My guess is editors wouldn’t bother if they didn’t mean it; I know I wouldn’t.

What advice would you give to writers who have never submitted work to a contest before?

Advice I’d give to writers who have never submitted to contests: I think this is true for contests and standard submissions alike: choose places you admire and would be proud to be a part of. Also: Aim high. You just never know.

 

Lenore Myka’s fiction was selected as a notable short story by The Best American Non-Required Reading of 2013 and a distinguished story by The Best American Short Stories of 2008. She was the winner of the 2013 Cream City Review and Booth Journal Fiction Contests, a finalist for the 2013 Glimmer Train Open Short Story Contest, and a semi-finalist for the 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Contest. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, Booth Journal, West Branch, Massachusetts Review, H.O.W. Journal, Upstreet Magazine, Talking River Review, and the anthology Further Fenway Fiction.