(a Press 53 publication)
Our Annual Contest Issue!
ISSUE 181, October — DECEMBER 2020
Welcome to our annual contest issue, where you will find the winners and runners-up of the 2020 Prime Number Magazine Awards for Poetry and Short Fiction; winners of our monthly (free) 53-Word Story Contest; winners of the Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize; and the winner of our annual (free) Prime 53 Poem Summer Challenge. Also in this issue, poetry selected by guest editor Felicia Mitchell, and short fiction selected by guest editor Shuly Xóchitl Cawood
Browse our selections for this issue by clicking on the author photo or the title of the poem or story. Enjoy!
Join us online with ZOOM for a reading by selected writers from Issue 181, Wednesday, October 14, 7PM. Register here to attend.
Winners of the 2020 Prime Number Magazine Awards for Poetry and Short Fiction
Short Fiction judged by
Wendy J. Fox
Poetry judged by
Adrian Rice
Runners-Up
Short Fiction Runners-up Selected by Press 53/Prime Number Magazine editors
Winners of the Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize
Low $7 entry fee (a prime number)
Judged by the Press 53/Prime Number Magazine editorial team
Winners of our FREE monthly 53-Word Story Contest
Winners of the “Prime 53 Poem” Summer Challenge
(A free and fun competition)
In the spring of 2019, Press 53 poetry editor Christopher Forrest and publisher Kevin Morgan Watson invented a new poetry form, the Prime 53 poem, which has a total of 53 syllables: three stanzas of three lines each with a syllable count of 7/5/3 and a final two line stanza with a syllable count of 5/3, for a total of 53 syllables. The stanzas must adhere to a rhyme pattern of a/b/a; c/d/c; e/f/e; g/g. We challenged our readers last summer, and again this summer, to write a Prime 53 poem, and the contest run all summer. Chris and Kevin selected four poems from the more than 250 that were submitted for publication in this issue of Prime Number Magazine. We thank everyone who participated.
Editors' Selections
Each issue, we ask our guest editors to select their favorite poems or stories from those submitted during our open submission period. Submissions are free and only accepted through Submittable. Here are the guest editors for Issue 181, October-December 2020.
Guest Editor for Poetry
Felicia Mitchell
Felicia Mitchell earned her BA and MA at the University of South Carolina, and her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. Her poems—which often touch on identity, family, and the natural world, or intersections of the three—have been published widely in journals and anthologies, including the recent Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene (West Virginia University Press) and Rewilding. Poems for the Environment (Flexible Press). "Up from Tumbling Creek" is included in an art installation in the metrorail system of northern Virginia. Before Waltzing with Horses (Press 53), she published two chapbooks, Earthenware Fertility Figure (Talent House Press) and The Cleft of the Rock (Finishing Line Press). She also edited Words & Quilts: A Selection of Quilt Poems (Quilt Digest Press) and Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women’s Poetry (University of Tennessee).
Felicia’S SELECTIONS
Guest Editor for Short Fiction
Shuly Xóchitl Cawood
Shuly Xóchitl Cawood is the author of A Small Thing to Want, her debut collection of short fiction. She is the author of two other books: The Going and Goodbye: A Memoir (Platypus Press, 2017) and 52 Things I Wish I Could Have Told Myself When I Was 17 (Cimarron Books, 2018). She earned her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and her writing has been published in Brevity, The Rumpus, Cider Press Review, and others. Learn more at www.shulycawood.com
Meet Our Guest Editors for Issue 193, Apr-Jun 2021
(Submissions are open now through December at Submittable)
Meg Eden
Guest Poetry Editor
Kate Hill Cantrill
Guest Short Fiction Editor
NOTE: Dennis McFadden, winner of the 2016 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, will be taking over for Kate, who must step down for personal reasons. We will update everything soon.
prime number
: any integer other than 0 or ± 1 that is not divisible without remainder by any other integers except ± 1 and ± the integer itself (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary)
In literature: poetry and prose that is distinctive and unique (Prime Number Magazine)
Prime Number Magazine is a Press 53 publication, founded by Clifford Garstang and Kevin Morgan Watson on July 17, 2010, beginning with Issue 2 and continuing in prime numbers.