ABOUT THE JUDGES
DANIELLE EVANS is the author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, which was a co-winner of the 2011 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, the winner of the 2011 Paterson Fiction Prize and the 2011 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and an honorable mention for the 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
ALICE SOLA KIM is a winner of the 2016 Whiting Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, McSweeney’s, BuzzFeed, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. She has received grants and scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Elizabeth George Foundation.
CARMEN MARIA MACHADO’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the World Fantasy Award, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She is the writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
ABOUT THE PEN/ROBERT J. DAU SHORT STORY PRIZE FOR EMERGING WRITERS
The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers recognizes twelve fiction writers for a debut short story published in a print or online literary magazine. The annual award was offered for the first time during PEN’s 2017 awards cycle.
The twelve winning stories are selected by a committee of three judges. The writers of the stories each receive a $2,000 cash prize and are honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City. Every year, Catapult will publish the winning stories in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories.
This award is generously supported by the family of the late Robert J. Dau, whose commitment to the literary arts has made him a fitting namesake for this career-launching prize. Mr. Dau was born and raised in Petoskey, a city in Northern Michigan in close proximity to Walloon Lake, where Ernest Hemingway had spent his summers as a young boy and which serves as the backdrop for Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring. Petoskey is also known for being where Hemingway determined that he would commit to becoming a writer. This proximity to literary history ignited the Dau family’s interest in promoting emerging voices in fiction and spotlighting the next great fiction writer.
LIST OF PARTICIPATING PUBLICATIONS
PEN America and Catapult gratefully acknowledge the following magazines, which published debut fiction in 2018 and submitted work for consideration to the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize.
805 Lit + Art
adda
Adolphus Journal
Alaska Quarterly Review
Anomaly Literary Journal
A Public Space
Atlantic Short Story Competition Anthology
Auburn Avenue
AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought
The Baltimore Review
The Bare Life Review
Bat City Review
Bazzanella Literary Awards Anthology
Bellevue Literary Review
Bennington Review
Birdy Magazine
Black Warrior Review
Body Without Organs
BOMB Magazine
The Brooklyn Review
Carve
Catamaran
Chicago Quarterly Review
Columbia Journal
The Common
Conjunctions
CRAFT
Crazyhorse
DIAGRAM
Epiphany
Exposition Review
The Florida Review
Fourteen Hills: The SFSU Review
Glimmer Train
Granta
Harvard Review
The Iowa Review
J Journal
Juked
KGB Bar Lit Mag
Kweli Journal
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
Levitate
Meridian Magazine
Mississippi Review
New England Review
New Ohio Review
Nimrod International Journal
Noble / Gas Qtrly
NOON
Out of the Gutter
Paper Darts
Passages North
Pembroke Magazine
Pigeon Pages
Ploughshares
Quarter After Eight
River Styx
The Rumpus
Scribble
The Sewanee Review
Shenandoah
SLICE
SmokeLong Quarterly
Stone Canoe
StoryQuarterly
Subtropics
The Sun
|tap| lit mag
Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern
Tin House
Virginia Quarterly Review
The Wild Word
Witness
Zoetrope: All-Story
ZYZZYVA
PERMISSIONS
“Bad Northern Women” by Erin Singer. First published in Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue, May 2018. Copyright © Erin Singer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Cicadas and the Dead Chairman” by Pingmei Lan. First published in Epiphany, Fall/Winter 2018. Copyright © Pingmei Lan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Good Hope” by Enyeribe Ibegwam. First published in Auburn Avenue, Issue IV, May 9, Spring/Summer 2018. Copyright © Enyeribe Ibegwam. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Last Days 1” by Tamiko Beyer. First published in Black Warrior Review 45.1, Fall/Winter 2018. Copyright © Tamiko Beyer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Manga Artist” by Doug Henderson. First published in The Iowa Review, Winter 2018/19. Copyright © Doug Henderson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Mother and Child” by Laura Freudig. First published in The Sun, April 2018. Copyright © Laura Freudig. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Rickies” by Sarah Curry. First published in Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Spring/Summer 2018, Vol. 61, No. 2. Copyright © Sarah Curry. Reprinted by permission of the University of Tulsa, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry.
“Today, You’re a Black Revolutionary” by Jade Jones. First published in The Rumpus, June 27, 2018. Copyright © Jade Jones. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Tornado Season” by Marilyn Manolakas. First published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol. 35, Nos. 1–2, Summer/Fall 2018. Copyright © Marilyn Manolakas. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Unsent Letters of Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal” by Kelsey Peterson. First published in Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity, November 2018. Copyright © Kelsey Peterson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Vain Beasts” by A. B. Young. First published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, No. 38, July 2018. Copyright © A. B. Young. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Without a Big One” by John Paul Infante. First published in Kweli Journal, May 31, 2018. Copyright © John Paul Infante. Reprinted by permission of the author.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and world-wide. The organization champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
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