FC2

At a moment when most large commercial publishers are scrambling simply to stay afloat amid the global economic collapse in order to produce more novels, collections, and novellas that want to be films when they grow up, I’m delighted to announce the advent of The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. The award will include $15,000 and publication of the winning manuscript by FC2.

U.S. writers in English with at least three books of fiction published are eligible. Submissions may include a collection of short stories, one or more novellas, or a novel. There is no length requirement. Works that have previously appeared in magazines or anthologies may be included. Translations and previously published novels and collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, former or current students or close friends of the final judge are ineligible, as are employees of and authors published by FC2.

Selection criteria will be consistent with FC2’s mission to bring forth fiction considered by America’s mainstream publishers too challenging, innovative, or heterodox for the commercial milieu. FC2 remains committed to work of high quality and exceptional ambition whose style, subject matter, and/or form push the limits of American publishing and help reshape our literary culture.

Finalists for The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize will be chosen by the FC2 Board of Directors: Kate Bernheimer, R. M. Berry, Noy Holland, Brenda Mills, Lance Olsen (Chair), Matt Roberson, Susan Steinberg, and Lidia Yuknavitch. Carole Maso, I’m thrilled to report, has agreed to serve as judge and pen a foreword to the winning manuscript.

Contest entries, which will be read blind, and which must be accompanied by a $25 reading fee, will be accepted between 15 August and 1 November. The winner will be announced 1 May 2010. For contest updates, entry instructions, and so on, please visit our newly revamped website (now replete, by the way, with blog, podcasts, upcoming events, links, and more) at fc2.org.

FC2 continues to endorse the contest ethics code set out by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. To that end, FC2 is committed to: 1) conducting our contests as ethically as possible and to addressing any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) providing clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) making the mechanics of our selection process transparent and available to the public.

The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize, designed to identify and welcome into the Collective mid-career authors finding it increasingly difficult to locate publishers for their literary experiments, will take its place beside FC2’s Ronald Sukenick American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize (now in its third year), designed to identify and welcome into the Collective early-career authors searching for an outlet for their ground-breaking work. This year’s judge for the latter will be Susan Steinberg, and our reading period will be the same as that for the Doctorow: 15 August through 1 November. (Again, for further information please visit our website.)

Please help FC2 get the word out about these contests by blog, Facebook, email, and word of mouth, and please urge authors of innovative fiction whom you know to submit their fiction.

Please join me as well in offering profound thanks to the benefactors behind both contests, none of whom is interested in fanfare. Through their generosity and dedication to fictions that most assuredly don’t want to be films when they grow up, and through the monumental effort (usually performed on a volunteer basis) on the part of our Board of Directors, contest judges, editorial pool, contest manuscript screeners, FC2’s layout arm at the Illinois State University, its production, distribution, and PR arm at the University of Alabama Press, its business offices at the University of Houston-Victoria, its coordination center at the University of Utah, and assistance from private contributors on and off our Board of Advisors, FC2 continues to embrace the collective spirit and literary activism that has made it one of America’s oldest independent presses run by authors for authors devoted to ever-shifting investigations into the innovative, and that has carried it successfully now into its surprising 35th year.

—Lance Olsen
Chair, FC2 Board of Directors