Pushcart Prize 2017

PHILADELPHIA STORIES NOMINATES SIX FOR PUSHCART PRIZE

Philadelphia Stories has nominated three poets and three short story writers for the 2018 Pushcart Prize.

The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America.
Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in our annual collections. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series. Every volume contains an index of past selections, plus lists of outstanding presses with addresses.

Mitchell Sommers, Fiction Editor and Courtney Bambrick, Poetry Editor, have announced the following nominees.

For Poetry, the nominees are:

***Nancy L. Davis for “Firestorm: Checagou”
A retired English professor, Nancy L. Davis divides her writing time between Chicago and Long Beach, Indiana, on Lake Michigan. Her poetry, short fiction, reviews and articles have placed in numerous competitions and appeared in such journals as Primavera, The Ledge Magazine of Poetry & Fiction, Route Nine and Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table. Prior to teaching, Ms. Davis wrote and produced award-winning educational films; she holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Literature from The University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

***Alejandro Escudé for “Content Warning: Pantoum”
Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

***Hayden Saunier for “Changes to Your Itinerary May Affect Your Fate”
Hayden Saunier is the author of Tips for Domestic Travel (Black Lawrence Press: 2009) Say Luck (Writers & Books: 2013), and a chapbook, “Field Trip to the Underworld” (Seven Kitchens Press: 2014) She has been published in a wide variety of journals including 5 a.m., Bellevue Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Tar River Poetry. Her work has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize, Gell Poetry Award and the Robert Fraser Award. (www.haydensaunier.com). Tips for Domestic Travel and Say Luck are both available from your local bookstore or through Amazon.com. Field Trip to the Underworld is available through Seven Kitchens Press.

For Fiction, the nominees are:

***Sharon White
Sharon White’s book Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. Boiling Lake, a collection of short fiction, is her most recent work. She is the 2017 winner of the McGlinn Fiction prize awarded yearly from Philadelphia Stories. She is also the author of two collections of poetry, Eve & Her Apple and Bone House. Her memoir, Field Notes, A Geography of Mourning, received the Julia Ward Howe Prize, Honorable Mention, from the Boston Authors Club. Some of her other awards include the Neil Shepard Prize from Green Mountains Review, Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, the Leeway Foundation Award for Achievement, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She teaches writing at Temple University in Philadelphia.

***Michele Lombardo
Michele Lombardo is a Pennsylvania-based writer of fiction and screenplays, as well as Co-Founder of Write Now Lancaster. Her work has appeared in Permafrost Magazine, Youth Imagination Magazine, The Journal of Crime, Law and Social Change, and others. She is a graduate of UCR Palm Desert’s MFA Program and is married with one daughter.

***Ramona DeFelice Long
Ramona DeFelice Long writes fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, and personal essays about women, family and culture, and the foibles and quirks of personal dynamics. Her work has appeared in numerous literary publications, and she provided a flash piece inspired by Dorothy P. Miller to PS Books’ EXTRAORDINARY GIFTS: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley. She is a transplanted Southerner living in Delaware.