Today is the big day! June 1st – the opening of Blue Mesa Review’s Annual Writing Contest. Submit your best fiction and poetry all the way through August 31st. For more details, see the contest portion of our website.
Be sure to check out last year’s winners (poetry and fiction), if you need some early summer inspiration.
Speaking of inspiration, we are constantly looking to our contest judges, Roxane Gay (fiction) and Carmen Giménez Smith (poetry) for a literary pick me up.
Roxane Gay’s first novel, An Untamed State, was recently published, and Bad Feminist, a collection of essays is forthcoming on August 4. You can read this recent review of her novel and/or even participate in the discussion by jumping in on some online book clubs with The Rumblr (The Rumpus’ tumblr – this one has already started, but you can catch up!) and The Toast (beginning June 23). Also, check out the interview our Fiction Editor, Brenna Gomez, did with her for BMR Issue No. 29.
Carmen Giménez Smith currently teaches nearby at NMSU and is editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol, a fellow literary magazine. You can hear her read from her most recent collection, Milk and Filth on NPR’s All Things Considered and on Poets and Writers.
Obviously, you can see why we think this contest is the best thing to ever happen to the first day of June, but here are a couple of other events that make this day notable, just for your entertainment!
- Children’s Day – celebrated in many countries on this day across the globe (including my native Poland!)
- Singer/Song-writer Alanis Morissette’s birthday
- More historically, in 1774, the Boston Harbor closed after the Tea Party leading up to the Revolutionary War, and in 1792, Kentucky and Tennessee became the 15th and 16th states, respectively.
We can’t wait for you to submit!
Diana Filar is a second-year Master’s student in Literature at The University of New Mexico.
