STARCHERONE BOOKS . independent innovative fiction

Falkner Wins 7th Starcherone Prize
Sarah Falkner of Brooklyn has won the 2010-11 Starcherone Fiction Prize for her novel, Animal Sanctuary. Final judge Stacey Levine, in selecting the book, comments: "Animal Sanctuary is an intensely focused, ambitious work with a wonderfully insistent sense of obsession. The novel brings together weirdly disparate elements in the same surprising way that life does. Returning continuously and seemingly helplessly to animals as a point of reference, Animal Sanctuary suggests that obsession may be the only way of pinning down the truth. This is a rich, interesting, multidimensional book that knows fragility and maps it."
see full announcement here

The 2011-12 Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, offering $1500 and publication with Starcherone Books, will begin accepting entries October 1, 2011.

Contest is open to story collections, novels, or indeterminate prose works up to 400 pages. Manuscripts will be blind-judged; the author's name should appear on the first of two title pages and nowhere else in the manuscript. There is an administrative fee of $35. Please do not send cash. The postmark deadline is February 15, 2011. The winner will be announced in August 2011. All finalists will be considered for publication with Starcherone Books. See our ad in the January-February 2011 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Final Judge Zachary Mason
We are thrilled to have as judge for our prize for innovative fiction not only a previous winner of the prize but an author whose first novel "is on many critics' short-lists for literary debut of the decade" (Buffalo News), Zachary Mason. Mason's acclaimed novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey won our 4th prize competition in 2007. Now out in a second edition from Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, The Lost Books has been acclaimed described as a "dazzling debut ... stunning and hypnotic," by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, and has been lauded in the Wall Street Journal, The London Review of Books, and practically everywhere else. Now, Zachary returns to help Starcherone find our newest prizewinner.

As Final Judge, Mason will make his selection out of a group of 5-10 finalists selected by our staff readers, and may request additional manuscripts from which to choose a winner.

As always, one manuscript will be selected as winner of our prize. Starcherone does not believe in holding competitions that do not select a winning book.

Previous Winners
2003-4 - Woman With Dark Horses by Aimee Parkison
2004-5 - Hangings: Three Novellas by Nina Shope
2005-6 - The Blue of Her Body by Sara Greenslit
2006-7 - The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
2007-8 - The Creepy Girl and other stories by Janet Mitchell
2009-10 - Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting
2010-11 - Animal Sanctuary by Sarah Falkner (due out in Spring 2012 season) : see prize announcement

Snail Mail Directions
There will be a reading fee of $35. Please do not send cash. The contest is blind-judged, so the author's name and contact information should appear on title page and nowhere else in manuscript. (Please also remove mentions of previous excerpt publications from manuscripts; do not include acknowledgment pages.) A second title page with only the manuscript title should also be included. Please mail to:
STARCHERONE FICTION PRIZE, Starcherone Books, P.O. Box 303, Buffalo, NY 14201-0303

Electronic
Send your reading fee of $35 to the above snail mail address. Then send your manuscript as an email attachment to publisher@starcherone.com. Please send the manuscript either as an Adobe pdf file or an MS Word file. In your email, give your name and contact information, as well as the title of your manuscript and a short author bio/publication history. Include only the title on your manuscript, with no mention of the author's name. If you wish, include a self-addressed postcard for notification that we have received both your manuscript and fee, as well as the SASE for contest results. Any questions may also be referred to publisher@starcherone.com.

Fine Print
In addition to the above, please note the following contest instructions. Manuscripts may be novels, collections, or any other full-length work you consider fiction. Collections should include a Table of Contents. No part of the manuscript should reveal the author's name except the title page. Please also omit acknowledgments of previously published excerpts in the manuscript. Please include an SASE with your submission for contest results. Manuscripts will be recycled after contest results are final. Please also include with manuscript: 1) a cover sheet with the author's name, street address, phone, email, and the manuscript title; 2) a one-page bio, including the author's publication history, in brief. Checks should be made out to Starcherone Books. The regular contest fee is $35 per entered manuscript. An author can enter as many times as s/he wishes, adding $35 per manuscript. Manuscripts submitted elsewhere may be entered, but if an entered manuscript is accepted elsewhere, PLEASE inform Starcherone Books immediately. All decisions by judges are final.

Statements on Ethics
We endorse and agree to comply with the following statement on Contest Ethics released by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses in 2005, which Starcherone Books helped develop during virtual roundtable discussions facilitated by CLMP in the summer of 2005:

CLMP's community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to
1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors;
2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines -- defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and
3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public.

This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

Our statements defining conflict of interest situations:
1) The winner of the Starcherone Fiction Prize cannot be someone whose work that year's Final Judge recognizes during the blind final-judging process.
2) In order that the best manuscript in the contest not be penalized simply because a Final Judge recognizes some aspect of the writing or deduces the author's identity based upon some circumstantial fact, Starcherone agrees to offer to publish the best manuscript received in our contest each year, even if this book is disqualified from winning our Prize. In such a circumstance, the Final Judge agrees to choose a second book as the winner of the Prize, in accordance with #1, above.
3) If anyone knows of any conflict of interest influencing a result in our contest, please make us aware of it and we will investigate and report our findings. Contest fees will be refunded upon request.
4) We ask that contestants realize we are a volunteer-run non-profit, and need the receipts of our contest in order to pursue our mission to seek the best innovative fiction and publish it for the purpose of public education in the art and appreciation of serious fiction. Our contest fees cover costs related to administering our contest and printing and publicizing the winning book only. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, financial statements which verify these statements are subject to federal review.

The 2011-12 Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, offering $1500 and publication with Starcherone Books, will begin accepting entries October 1, 2011.

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