2016 Judge: Diane Gilliam

Contest submission window: April 1 – June 1, 2016

A writing practice requires us to slow down, reflect, attend. HeartWood Literary Magazine & West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program seek to honor this practice with the launch of an annual broadside series and contest. Partnering with West Virginia artist Diane Radford of Dog and Pony Press, we will print the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) on a limited-edition letterpress broadside featuring an original image inspired by the text. The annual broadside will be an artifact companion the fall issue of the digital magazine. Both the handmade and the electronic HeartWood venues aim to showcase work that gets to the heart of the matter.

Contest Judge: DIANE GILLIAM is the author of four collections of poetry: Everything Ever, Everything After (forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2016), Kettle Bottom, One of Everything and Recipe for Blackberry Cake (chapbook). She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and is the most recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.

$500 cash prize + 25 copies of limited-edition letterpress broadside will be awarded to the winner.

Detailed guidelines here: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/contest/

HeartWood