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2008 Contest - Winning writer, final judge, text of winning story, and list of finalists

2007 Contest - Winning writer, final judge, text of winning story, and list of finalists

Winning stories and authors from past years

Text of winning stories

Final judges from past years

For more information...

Callie Bates named winner of the 2007 Nick Adams Short Story Contest

Press release April 18, 2007

Callie Bates, a sophomore at Lawrence University, has been named the winner of the 35th annual ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest. Ms. Bates' story, "The Swans at Roxleigh," was selected from the 45 stories submitted by students from ACM colleges.

Professors David McGlynn of Lawrence University and Valerie Viers of Ripon College served as initial faculty readers for the contest, selecting six finalists from which the final judge made her choice.

Antonya Nelson, professor and author of both novels and short stories, served as the final judge for the contest this year, which carries with it a first prize of $1,000, made possible through a generous gift from an anonymous donor.

In commenting on Ms. Bates' story, Ms. Nelson wrote:

This story is a lovely meditation on loss and lostness, and its central achievement, among many, is that it places the reader so thoroughly in another place, another time, with such authority. The story reminds the reader that people have endured suffering, caused suffering, and survived it for as long as time itself. I felt both transported by and utterly invested in this wonderful piece.

Callie Bates is an English major at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. While she has no definite plans for her life after Lawrence, she is considering MFA programs.

Ms. Bates says she has been "making up stories" for as long as she can remember, but didn't start writing them down until the summer she turned 10 and has been writing ever since. She "would like to thank all of those who critiqued the original version of this story, particularly Professor McGlynn; and of course "the triumvirate"; but my deepest gratitude goes to my parents, who gave me the skills and courage with which to write."

Ms. Bates intends to travel more extensively in the next few years and hopes to visit the place where "The Swans at Roxleigh" was set.

Text of "The Swans at Roxleigh" by Callie Bates

2007 Finalists

• Callie Bates, Lawrence University -- "The Swans at Roxleigh" (Winning story)
• Scott Reynhout, Beloit College -- "For Me to Feel Less Alone"
• Steve Ringman, Lawrence University -- "Next Exit"
• Kate Schlachter, Knox College -- "Outside Johannesburg"
• Lindsay Sproul, Beloit College -- "A Quantity of Fish Caught"
• Sarah Jane Wylder, Knox College -- "The Book of Indian Birds"

Antonya Nelson Serves as the 2007 Final Judge for the Nick Adams Contest

Press release January 23, 2007

Antonya Nelson has agreed to serve as the professional judge for the 2007 Nick Adams Short Story Contest. She is the author of five short story collections: Some Fun: Stories and a Novella (2006), Female Trouble (2002), Family Terrorists (1994), In the Land of Men (1992), The Expendables (1990), and three novels: Living to Tell (2000), Nobody's Girl (1998), and Talking in Bed (1996).

The New Yorker named Ms. Nelson one of the "twenty young fiction writers for the new millennium" and Granta described her as among the "best of the young American novelists." The Washington Post Book World described the author as "a formidable writer. That is, she's a woman of piercing intelligence, a first-rate stylist, an explorer of language who questions all its customary uses while fashioning evocative descriptions and incisive phrases." Joyce Carol Oates reviewed Some Fun for The New York Times and commented that "Antonya Nelson writes stories dense with the texture of domesticity that move with the wayward and seemingly unpredictable energies of life, more likely to trail off enigmatically at their endings than to decisively, or dramatically, conclude in the way of the classic short story."

Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Antonya Nelson is a graduate of the University of Kansas and obtained a MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona. Nelson is also a member of the faculty of University of Houston. In addition to teaching and writing fiction, Nelson is married to Robert Boswell and the couple has two teenage children.

Antonya Nelson's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Redbook, TriQuarterly, Story and other publications. Her first novel, Talking in Bed, received the Heartland Award in fiction, while five of her books were New York Times Notable Books in 2002, 2000, 1998, 1996, and 1992. She was awarded the O. Henry Prize, the PEN/Nelson Algren Award, the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Award, and the 2003 Rea Award for Short Fiction. Ms. Nelson is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000-2001) and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Antonya Nelson has also served as the Chairman of the fiction jury for the National Book Foundation's National Book Awards.