Carter V. Cooper Memorial Prize

Yesterday someone commented that it was Carter's death anniversary. Maybe the half Mexican in me makes me focus more in the celebration of life rather than death. Some time ago I received this information, but didn't find the right time to post it, but what a better way to celebrate his life!

This editorial contest have been hosted for the last years by the Ontario Review Press,

Founded in 1974, Ontario Review is one of the longest-lived literary journals published today. Conceived of as a North American Journal of the Arts, it was intended to bridge what Joyce and I, Americans teaching in Canada at the time, felt to be a widening gap between the two literary/artistic cultures. We tried to do this by publishing writers and artists from both countries, as well as essays and reviews of an intercultural nature. When we moved to Princeton, we put less emphasis on the intercultural role of the journal, though we still published many Canadians, from Margaret Atwood to Tom Wayman.

Literary journals like Epoch, Kenyon Review, and Southern Review were of great importance in nourishing Joyce's incipient career as an author in the sixties, and she and I have always seen the nurturing role as a function of our journal. Over the years, many young writers have had their first published story or poem appear in Ontario Review. Some of them, like Pinckney Benedict and Reginald Gibbons, have gone on to distinguished literary careers.

Ontario Review publishes original fiction, poetry, personal essays, drama, photographs, graphics, and interviews with prominent contemporary authors. Each issue is a blend of older, more established writers with promising younger ones. Stories and poems appearing in the Review are regularly chosen for national anthologies of the best fiction and poetry published each year. "Given the small number of stories it publishes, Ontario Review has one of the highest batting averages for prize-winning fiction in the field," observed DeWitt Henry in Wilson Library Bulletin.

Over the past two and a half decades we have featured over 450 different poets, writers, translators, reviewers, artists, and photographers. Among them are Alice Adams, Jane Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Donald Barthelme, Saul Bellow, Pinckney Benedict, Earle Birney, Joseph Brodsky, Hayden Carruth, Raymond Carver, Annie Dillard, Rita Dove, Margaret Drabble, Stuart Dybek, Carlos Fuentes, Tess Gallagher, Albert Goldbarth, Nadine Gordimer, Eaman Grennan, Donald Hall, William Heyen, Ted Hughes, Josephine Jacobsen, Jill Krementz, Maxine Kumin, Irving Layton, Doris Lessing, Alistair MacLeod, W. S. Merwin, Mary Morris, Barry Moser, Gloria Naylor, Joyce Carol Oates, Alicia Ostriker, Jay Parini, Stanley Plumly, Reynolds Price, Ned Rorem, Philip Roth, Dave Smith, Gary Soto, Elizabeth Spencer, William Stafford, Mark Strand, Deborah Tannen, Melanie Rae Thon, Chase Twichell, John Updike, David Wagoner, Robert Penn Warren, Tom Wayman, Theodore Weiss, C. K. Williams, and Charles Wright.

Guidelines for the 2007 Cooper Short Fiction Prize: $1,000 plus publication

• Submissions accepted from May 1 to September 1, 2007.
  
  
• Submissions limited to one story of not more than twenty-five double-spaced typewritten pages.
  


• Mail submissions to:
  
  The Cooper Fiction Prize
  Ontario Review
  9 Honey Brook Drive
  Princeton, NJ 08540.
  


• Include self-addressed, stamped envelope for return of manuscript or notification.
  


• An entry fee of $15, which includes a 1-year subscription to Ontario Review, is also required.
  


• Please make out a check or money order (U.S. funds only) to Ontario Review.