The Carolina Quarterly

Aww shucks. You shouldn’t have.

The fine people over at NewPages have us blushing with Sarah Gorman’s glowing review of CQ 61:1.

We’re down to about 6 copies of this issue left in the office, but as Gorman reminds us: “Chapel Hill scholars are indeed fortunate that, as the back cover states, the publication is ‘Free to UNC Students.’” So, Tar Heels, take a gander here: https://cqarchives.web.unc.edu/

In 2011, The Carolina Quarterly partnered with Tell It Slant to offer streamlined online submissions. Thanks in part to the help of Tell It Slant, our response times have been cut in half, and our lost/missing submissions dropped from 30% (which was inexcusable) to 0%, according to Duotrope.com.

In 2012, we’d like to thank all of our submitters who use Tell It Slant, and encourage those who don’t to give it a try. Each month in 2012, we will select one person who submitted via Tell It Slant during that month to receive a FREE one-year subscription to The Carolina Quarterly.

Happy New Year – may it be full of good reading, productive writing, and successful submitting!

Thanks to everyone who entered our November Tagline Contest.

We had a number of wonderful submissions, which caused some consternation among the selection committee. After much debate, however, we finally reached a consensus.

Dyson Shultz’s “Quizzical Syzygy Since 1948″ will appear as the tagline for CQ issue 61.3, due out in late December 2011. As a prize, Dyson will receive a one-year subscription to the journal.

This contest was such a success, that we’ve decided to run it again in the future. Visit the CQ website in February 2012 to give it another shot.

We hate playing favorites. But, we also love promoting the work of our talented writers. That’s why we send copies of CQ to editors of compilations such as Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, and websites such as Poetry Daily. These anthologies make our work easy – we send them everything, and they decide what they like best. But since some contests force us to choose, we must choose.

Here are this year’s Pushcart Prize nominees:

Fiction:
Nahal S. Jamir – “In Perfect English” (61.2)
Aaron Gwyn – “Sweet Relief” (61.2)

Non-Fiction:
Thomas Horan – “Eat the Cake” (61.1)

Poetry:
Amorak Huey – “The Men at the Block Party” (61.2)
Mamie Morgan – “Her Ninth Wintering” (61.2)

Genre-defying:
James McFatter – “American Desire” (61.2)

In other contest news, we’ve nominated Matthew Hamity’s “Regarding Donor #5873 and Him or Her” (61.1) for New Stories from the Midwest, and Pamela DiFrancesco’s “The Chuck Berry Tape Massacre” (61.1) for Best American Mystery Writing. The latter prize interprets mystery broadly, indicating that a crime or threat of crime hangs over the plot. We think DiFrancesco’s story, though not a genre piece, fits this criteria in all its multi-layered emotional complexity.

Congrats to all the nominees. Here’s hoping for good news on all fronts.