Home » A Grand Prize (as in $1,000) Awaits the Winner of the Nick Adams Contest

A Grand Prize (as in $1,000) Awaits the Winner of the Nick Adams Contest

A Grand Prize (as in $1,000) Awaits the Winner of the Nick Adams Contest September 30, 2013

ACM has announced that it is seeking entries for the 42nd annual Nick Adams Short Story Contest, which offers a $1,000 prize for the best story written by a student at an ACM college.

Last year, Carleton College student Sarah Olson was awarded the contest’s top honor for her story, “Truth in Lies,” and Bryan Hulse from St. Olaf College received honorable mention recognition for “Hob Carter.” The selections were made by novelist Peter Geye, who served as the final judge for the 2013 competition.

Sarah Olson2013 Nick Adams Contest winner Sarah Olson from Carleton College.

The Nick Adams Contest, named for the young protagonist in many of Ernest Hemingway’s stories, was established with prize money provided by an anonymous donor to encourage fiction writing at ACM colleges.

Students submit their stories to their campus English department. Stories need not have been written especially for the contest, but cannot have been previously published off-campus. Each department will select the four best entries to send to the ACM office. A small committee of faculty drawn from colleges throughout the consortium will select the semi-finalists, and the winner will be chosen by a professional writer.

Past judges for the Nick Adams Contest have included such writers as Maya Angelou, Saul Bellow, Larry Heinemann, Bharati Mukherjee, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Tyler, John Updike, Stuart Dybek, and Audrey Niffenegger.

Stories for the 2014 contest must be forwarded from the colleges’ English departments to the ACM office no later than February 14, and the results of the competition will be announced in mid-March. Students should contact the English department chair on their campus for information about the on-campus submission deadline.

Winning stories from recent years, as well as information about the authors and the final judges, are posted on the Nick Adams Contest webpage.

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