SCWW is offering two contests this year: the second annual Scott Lax Scholarship to Wildacres Writers Workshop and the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards. See the contest descriptions and guidelines below.
Congratulations to Paula Huffman! She is the winner of the 2013 Scott Lax Scholarship to Wildacres Writers Workshop.
2013 Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards
Carrie Allen McCray was one of the founders and first board members of the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop. Her published works include Ajös Means Goodbye (1966), The Black Woman and Family Rules (1980), and her first person memoir, Freedom’s Child: The life of a Confederate General’s Black Daughter (1998) while about her mom, it is also Carrie’s story. Her poetry has appeared in such magazines as Ms. and The River Styx. She died on July 25, 2008, aged 94.
The Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards will again be a part of SCWW’s annual conference in 2013. Competition is open to SCWW members and non-members. Deadline for submissions is March 1 to April 30, 2013. Winning entries will be published October, 2013 in the Petigru Review.
Submission Guidelines
The 2012 Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards will feature three genres: First Chapter Novel, short story and creative nonfiction. Submissions may be up to 3500 words of First Chapter Novel, 2500 words of fiction, and/or up to 2000 words of nonfiction. Submissions that exceed the length limit in any category will be disqualified. Only one submission per category allowed.
Submissions may be emailed no earlier than March 1, 2013 and no later than April 30, 2013.
The competition is open to SCWW members and non-members. Please contact Jim McFarlane, Membership Chair, at scwwmembership@gmail.com if you have any questions about your membership status. New members are always welcome.
Each entry will be scored in the areas listed below on a scale of 0.00 to 10, with 10 being the best, for a possible perfect score of 30. Winning pieces must have a score of 24 or above.
CONTENT = creativity, originality
STRUCTURE = grammar, mechanics
STYLE = story arc, aesthetics success, cohesion
Members of the SCWW Contest Committee or SCWW Board of Directors are not eligible. Anyone winning or placing in a category cannot enter the same category the following year; anyone winning or placing in the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards two consecutive years is not eligible for one year in any category.
With the exception of work previously published in The Quill, only unpublished work is eligible. The same work cannot be submitted in 2012 to the Carrie McCray Literary Awards and The Petigru Review. If a piece has been accepted elsewhere following submission, notify the SCWW Contests Chair immediately.
Awards
First Place – $200.00 and publication in The Petigru Review
Second Place – $100.00 and publication in The Petigru Review
Third place – certificate of honorable mention
Authors whose work is selected for publication in the 2013 volume of The Petigru Review will receive two contributor’s copies. SCWW retains first-time publication rights until the literary journal is published, at which time publication rights revert to the author. SCWW also solicits authors’ non-exclusive first Internet archival rights for online archiving.
SCWW reserves the right to edit the winning pieces at The Petigru Review editor’s sole discretion.
Proofreading is important.
Manuscript Formatting
- No paper copies will be accepted. Only electronic submissions are allowed.
- All submissions must be formatted as a standard manuscript. Use only 12 point Times New Roman font, indent paragraphs, and double-space.
- The title and page number must appear on every page of a submission. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript(s), including in the body of the work.
- Each submission package must include one cover sheet that may be downloaded here.
- Send a copy of each manuscript as a Microsoft Word attachment (with a “.doc” suffix, not “.docx”) in a separate e-mail to scwwcontests@gmail.com.
- In the Subject line type Carrie McCray 2013. In the body of the e-mail include an author biography of up to 100 words. Please also attach a high resolution color or black and white photo of yourself, preferably a head shot.
- All emails with attachments must be sent between March 1, 2012 and April 30, 2013.
- Submissions that do not adhere to the guidelines will be disqualified and the entrant notified.
Reading Fees
There is a $25.00 reading fee required with each submission for members and $50.00 reading fee per submission for non-members. Please make your check payable to SCWW and mail with cover sheet to:
Marilyn Benner Sowyak, SCWW Contests Chair
7622 Quail Hill Rd.
Charlotte,NC 28210
If you have any questions, contact scwwcontests@gmail.com.
2012 Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards Winners
Novel First Chapter
1st Place – “Aroon” – Mary Beth Gibson
2nd Place – “Fellow Traveler” – James D McAllister
Honorable Mention – “Chattel” – John Holcomb
Short Fiction
1st Place – “Seeking Level” – Beth Browne
2nd Place – “Her Daughter My Sister” – Kim Catanzarite
Honorable Mention – “Ricochet” – Lauren Allen
Non Fiction
1st Place – “Wolf Man Howls into Manhood” – Helen Aitken
2nd Place – “Fairy Tales of a Fragile Mind” – Vickie Dailey
Honorable Mention – “The Dead and the Living” – William Thrift
