Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

Hyphen and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop are pleased to announce the winner of the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest: Sunil Yapa for “Pilgrims.”

“Pilgrims” was chosen by judges Alexander Chee and Jaed Coffin as the winner of the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest. Yapa will be awarded $1000 and “Pilgrims” will be published in the Fall Issue of Hyphen, to be on newsstands this September.

We would also like to congratulate the finalists, who will receive a one-year subscription to Hyphen and a one-year membership to AAWW:

Viet Dinh for “Lucky Dragon”

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier for “Antique”

Marjan Kamali for “Tehran Party”

Stellar Kim for “Dissolution”

Tsering Lama for “The Greatest Tibetan Ever Born”

Jenie Pak for “Something Out There”

JK Shushtari for “The Sweet Dry Fruit of the Lotus Tree”

Shilpi Suneja for “The Simpleton”

Shruti Swamy for “Blindness”

We received a record-breaking number of submissions for the contest this year and would like to thank all entrants for allowing us to review their work. We wish them the best in their writing endeavors. Past winners of the Asian American Short Story Contest include Preeta Samarasa and Shivani Manghnani.

Thank you also to the judges, Alexander Chee, Whiting award-winning author of Edinburgh, and Jaed Coffin, author of A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants. A special thank you to reader Maria X. Isip-Bautista.

We also would like to give a special thanks to our media and community sponsors: Angry Asian Man, AsianWeek, Center for Asian American Media, Fiction Writers Review, Kearny Street Workshop and the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance. Stay tuned for more info on this year contest!

Here are the entry details from this year's contest:

Are you an unpublished writer, waiting to be discovered? Think you have what it takes to win a national, pan-Asian American writing competition—the ONLY one of its kind? Here’s your shot at showing off your roots and writing.

Hyphen and The Asian American Writers’ Workshop proudly present the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest.

Prize: $1,000, publication in Hyphen magazine and the honor of short story of the year.

Now in its third year, the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest will name 10 finalists and one grand prize-winner who will win a cash prize of $1000 and have the winning story published in an upcoming issue of Hyphen.

Judges for the 2010 contests include renowned Asian American writers:

• Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh (Picador), and winner of the Whiting award, the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize
  
  
• Jaed Coffin, the author of A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants (Da Capo Press).

Our first contest winner Preeta Samarasan was discovered based on her contest winning story. She went on to write the acclaimed novel Evening is the Whole Day (Houghton Mifflin), which was long-listed for the Orange Prize.

What will your story do for you?

Prizes

One (1) GRAND PRIZE WINNER

• $1,000 cash prize
• Publication in Hyphen to 10,000 eager readers
• One-year subscription to Hyphen magazine
• One-year membership to AAWW, the premiere literary arts nonprofit in the country dedicated to Asian American literature.

Ten (10) FINALISTS

• One-year subscription to Hyphen magazine
• One-year membership to AAWW, the premiere literary arts nonprofit in the country dedicated to Asian American literature.

Qualifications and Guidelines

• Open to all writers of Asian descent living in the United States and Canada. Previous employees, consultants, or volunteers of Hyphen or AAWW are not eligible.
• Limited to short works of previously unpublished fiction, including short stories, novellas and excerpts from novels; the latter must stand alone as a separate work. No required theme.
• Up to 6,000 words in length.

Instructions

• The submission process has two easy steps, both of which must be completed by April 12, 2010 and accompanied by a $20 entry fee (April 12th postmark deadline). 
• First, register here and pay the $20 entry fee by buying one ticket. You will receive a registration email with a Transaction ID, so please double check that you are typing your email correctly.
• Next, mail us TWO COPIES of your short story with the title, page numbers, and Transaction ID on the top right of every page. The story should not feature any other identifying information, such as your name, phone number, or email address. Submissions should be double-spaced and mailed to:
  
  Asian American Short Story Contest
  Hyphen
  17 Walter U. Lum Place
  San Francisco, CA 94108.

Manuscripts may be under consideration elsewhere, but please notify us immediately if your story is accepted for publication. Hyphen retains first publication rights and the right to publish a portion of the story on its website. All rights revert to the author upon publication.

For questions: please contact Neelanjana Banerjee at neelanjana.banerjee@hyphenmagazine.com

Judges' Bios

Alexander Chee was born in Rhode Island, and raised in South Korea, Guam and Maine. He is a recipient of the 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in Fiction and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the VCCA. His first novel, Edinburgh (Picador, 2002), is a winner of the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year and a Booksense 76 selection. In 2003, Out Magazine honored him as one of their 100 Most Influential People of the Year. His essays and stories have appeared in Granta.com, Out, The Man I Might Become, Loss Within Loss, Men On Men 2000, His 3 and Boys Like Us. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has taught fiction writing at the New School University and Wesleyan. He is currently the Visiting Writer at Amherst College and lives in Western Massachusetts. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He blogs at Koreanish.

Jaed Muncharoen Coffin is the author A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants, a memoir which chronicles the time he spent as a Buddhist monk in his mother's village in Thailand. His next book, Roughhouse Friday, is about the year he fought as the middleweight champion of an Alaskan barroom boxing circuit. From Brunswick, Maine, Jaed is currently the Wilson Fellow in Creative Writing at Deerfield Academy, and serves on the faculty of University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA.

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