Nick Adams Short Story Contest
Each year in the spring, ACM sponsors the Nick Adams Short Story Contest. The contest, named for the young hero of many Hemingway stories, was established in 1973 with funds from an anonymous donor to encourage young writers. A first prize of $1,000 is awarded to the author of the winning story.
Any student at an ACM college is eligible to enter the Nick Adams Contest and may submit up to two stories to their English department. The story need not have been written especially for the competition, but it cannot have been previously published off-campus. Each department selects the four best stories to enter in the competition, which is coordinated by the ACM office.
A small committee of faculty drawn from ACM colleges selects the finalists. A prominent writer serves as the contest's final judge each year and selects the winning story from among the finalists.
Nick Adams Contest final judges in past years have included such literary luminaries as Jane Smiley, Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Anne Tyler, Maya Angelou, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Hamilton, and Stuart Dybek. See the complete list of final judges.
Nick Adams Contest final judges in recent years
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2011 - Binnie Kirshenbaum
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2010 - Alex Kotlowitz
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2009 - Audrey Niffenegger
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2008 - Stuart Dybek
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2007 - Antonya Nelson
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2012 Nick Adams Contest
Clare Boerigter Named Winner of the 2012 Contest for Her Story "Gusanos"
Clare Boerigter, a sophomore at Grinnell College, was named the winner of the 40th annual ACM Nick Adams Short Story Contest. Boerigter’s story "Gusanos" was selected to receive the $1,000 first prize by Gina Frangello, the Chicago-based novelist, editor, and professor who served as the final judge for the contest this year.
Clare Boerigter
Forty stories were submitted by students from ACM colleges for the 2012 Nick Adams Contest. Professors Sören Steding from Luther College and Craig Watson from Monmouth College served as initial faculty readers, selecting the six finalists from which Frangello made her choice.
In commenting on Boerigter's story, Frangello wrote that "Gusanos" is:
A story that strongly evokes both beauty and brutality in its landscape, it is at once spiritual and skeptical, sensual but pragmatic…. The (somewhat enigmatic) narrator manages to achieve an intense humanity while also remaining slightly on the periphery of her own story, a "recorder" of events like her own camera's lens. The story's ending feels harrowing and earned.
Chicago Writer Gina Frangello Was the 2012 Nick Adams Final Judge
Gina Frangello
Gina Frangello, novelist, editor, and faculty member at both Columbia College Chicago and Northwestern University, served as the final judge for the 2012 Nick Adams Short Story Contest.
Frangello's books include A Life in Men (forthcoming in 2013) and My Sister's Continent (2006). Slut Lullabies, her short story collection, was published in 2010. She guest-edited the anthology Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters (2004), and her short fiction has appeared in many publications, including StoryQuarterly, Swink, Clackamas Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Fence, MAKE magazine, and the Chicago Reader. Read more
More information about the Contest