The winner of each contest will be announced in early June.
This year we chose two winners for the Tartt First Fiction
Contest:
Enid Harlow’s Voices and Jeffrey S. Markovitz’s Zero Day
Blue Jay. Their collections will be published in July of 2025.
We wish to congratulate the following finalists:
David P. Anderson, Tyler Ayres,
Alice
Bolstridge,
Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal, Dave Cook Fuller, Cary
Groner,
John Jeffire, Mary Lewis, Geri Lipschultz, Simone Martel,
Calvin Mills, Elizabeth Nelson, Kathryn Paulsen, E. G. Silverman, Bill Smoot, P.
G. Smith,
Cliff Summers, and Jon Ulmer.
Due to an unexpected move across campus, we will need to hold off reading for next year's contest for reorganization.
Tartts Fiction Award, rules 2023
1. Winning short story collection will be published by Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama, in simultaneous library binding and trade paper editions. Winning entry will receive $1000, plus our standard royalty contract, which includes 60 copies of the book.
2. Author must not have book of short fiction published at time of entry, though novels are okay. In keeping with Tartt’s biography, we are looking for an author who has yet to publish a fiction collection.
3. Stories may have been previously published by magazines or in anthologies, though the author should have all rights. Magazines will be acknowledged. Include a list of publications, if so desired.
4. Manuscripts must be typewritten, and we will ask for a computer file in Windows/Mac Word from the winning author and from the finalists for our anthology.
5. Manuscript length: 160-275 pages.
6. Deadline for email: We have returned the email deadline to December 31 of every year. Please read Number eight for correct file formatting.
7. Entry fee: No entry fee.
8. Please email as either a Word document only. Please use this format for the title of your file: Tarttentry_LastName_FirstName
9. Winner announced in summer 2023. Publication in spring 2024.
10. Winner must be an American citizen; work must be in English.
11. Style and content of manuscripts are completely open.
12. Finalists will be considered for our regular publication schedule and for our Tartt Anthology.
13. Email entries to: jwt@uwa.edu
PAST WINNERS: first Melissa Fraterrigo The Longest Pregnancy
second Philip Cioffari A History of Things Lost or Broken
third Xujun Eberlein Apologies Forthcoming
fourth Stacia Saint Owens Auto-Erotica
fifth M. O. Walsh A Prospect of Magic
sixth Kurt Jose Ayau The Brick Murder: A Tragedy and other stories
seventh Josie Sigler The Galaxie and Other Rides
eighth John Oliver Hodges The Love Box
ninth Tara Mantel Elemental
tenth Maureen Millea Smith The Enigma of Iris Murphy
eleventh John Shea Tales from Websster's
twelfth Amos Jasper Wright Nobody Knows How It Got This Good
thirteenth Kendall Klym Step Lightly
fourteenth Robert McKean I'll Be Here for You
fifteenth James Braziel This Ditch-Walking Love
sixteenth Judy Juanita The High Price of Freeways (co winner)
sixteenth Schuyler Dickson Yazoo Clay (co-winner)
seventeenth Joshua Shaw All We Could Have Been
Past Runner ups: third Carol Manley Church Booty
seventh Eric Sasson Margins of Tolerance
seventh Robert McVey We Have a Pie
eighth Pat Mayer Two Legs, Bad
eighth Armond Boudreaux That He May Raise
ninth Betty Jean Tucker On a darkling Plain
ninth Gregg Cusick MyFather Moves Through Time Like a Dirigible
PAST TARTTS STORIES: For a complete list, see the Tartt books, under fiction.
Purpose: Though Ruby Pickens Tartt worked for the Works Project Association in collecting slave narratives in Alabama, and though she was published in several literary magazines, her work was only collected under her name and published posthumously. Accordingly, we are hoping to give a beginning fiction writer a chance for publication. All styles considered: we are in the South, not particularly of it.