Grain News
June 10, 2013
Ayelet Tsabari's "Yemeni Soup and Other Recipes" (Unstrung, issue 39.4) won Silver in the One of a Kind category at the National Magazine Awards. Congratulations, Ayelet!
June 3, 2013
Our new issue, The Issues Issue (issue 40.3), has been issued. Find it in a mailbox (or a bookstore) near you. But remember: stealing mail is a federal offense.
May 2, 2013
Ayelet Tsabari's "Yemeni Soup and Other Recipes" (Unstrung, issue 39.4) caught the attention of juries for both the Western Magazine Awards and the National Magazine Awards, garnering nominations for one of each. Congratulations and good luck, Ayelet.
Grain was also recognized by the Western Magazine Awards with a nomination for Magazine of the Year - Saskatchewan. The winners of the WMAs will be announced on June 21, 2013. The NMA winners will be announced June 7, 2013.
April 8, 2013
The League of Canadian Poets has shortlisted several of our past contributors in their annual awards: congratulations to James Arthur (29.2) for shortlisting in the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and to Marilyn Bowering (38.3), Lorna Crozier (26.4), Maureen Scott Harris (36.1), Evelyn Lau (34.2), and Rachel Rose (27.2) for shortlisting in the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. The shortlist for The Raymond Souster Award includes recent contributors John Wall Barger (39.2), Nancy Holmes (28.3), A. F. Moritz (5.2), and Pamela Porter (30.4). Read all about it at Quill & Quire.
Grain really does publish the best of the best. Recent shortlists for both the Manitoba Book Awards and the Saskatchewan Book Awards feature writers well known to our readers.
Méira cook, our poetry judge for the Short Grain Writing Contest, has been shortlisted in the McNally Robinson Book of the Year and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction categories for her novel The House on Sugarbush Road.
Our in-house haiku astrologist, Jonathan Ball, received a nomination for the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry for his book The Politics of Knives.
Also present on the Manitoba Book Awards shortlist are Grain alumni David Bergen, Sarah Klassen, Annette Lapointe and Naomi K. Lewis.
Dave Margoshes, who according to our records has appeared in Grain twenty times, appears four times on the Saskatchewan Book Awards shortlist, honoured for his most recent work, A Book of Great Worth. Jeanette Lynes, who has been included in Grain's pages a half-dozen times, is nominated twice for her book of poetry Archive of the Undressed.
Donald Ward, Séan Virgo, Sandy Bonny, Brenda Schmidt, Barbara Sapergia, Beverley Brenna and Beth Goobie, who have all published in Grain, have also been nominated for this year's Saskatchewan Book Awards.
Congratulations and good luck to all!
Announcing our 25th Annual Short Grain Writing Contest!
Judges for the 25th Annual Short Grain contest will be Stan Rogal, Fiction, and Méira Cook, Poetry. Winning entries and judges’ comments will be published in Grain Vol 41 No 2. The deadline is April 1, 2013.
24th Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Contest Winners!
Judges for the 24th Annual Short Grain contest were Lawrence Hill, Fiction, and rob mclennan, Poetry. Winning entries and judges’ comments will be published in Grain’s Winter 2013 issue, Vol 40 No 2. The deadline was April 2, 2012.
Congratulations to the winners:
Fiction: judged by Lawrence Hill
1st Prize, $1000 — Susan Mersereau of Vancouver, BC
2nd Prize, $750 — Madeline Sonik of Victoria, BC
3rd Prize, $500 — Alexandra Sadinoff of New York, NY
Poetry: judged by rob mclennan
1st Prize, $1000 — Sean Howard of Main-à-Dieu, NS
2nd Prize, $750 — Jordan Abel of Vancouver, BC
3rd Prize, $500 — Kate Flaherty of Toronto, ON
Western Magazine Awards just named us "Magazine of the Year - Saskatchewan" for 2012!
A special thanks to our contributing writers and featured artists: Grain wouldn't be possible without you!
This achievement was made possible by the effort of many hands, especially our previous Editor, Sylvia Legris, our former Business Administrator, Mike Thompson, our Designer Betsy Rosenwald, and our former Proofreader Chuqiao Yang. Congratulations!
Finally, we would not be able to publish engaging, eclectic, and challenging writing and art without our publisher - the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild - and financial support from our donors and funding agencies.
June 12, 2012
Grain welcomes Adam Pottle as the new Associate Poetry Editor and Robin Mowat as the new Business Administrator.
Grain recieved WMA and NMA nominations, and congratulations to recent Grain contributor Marilyn Bowering.
Grain is a finalist in this year’s Western Magazine Awards for Magazine of the Year—Saskatchewan. The winners will be announced on June 15th at the WMA ceremony in Vancouver.
In the National Magazine Awards, Marilyn Bowering was a finalist for Poetry for her poems "Starting School", "Connection", and "Fidelity", published in HONEYSUCKLE, our Spring 2011 issue. Winners were announced on June 7th at the NMA Gala in Toronto.
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April 4, 2012
Grain Volume 39 No 2, Winter 2012, HITS, is right around the corner! Cover and interior art by Saskatoon artist Tammy Lu!
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MARCH 30, 2012
Grain seeks Associate Poetry Editor.
Are you passionate about poetry? Do you keep your finger on the pulse of the local and national literary community? The Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild is seeking an Associate Poetry Editor for Grain, the journal of eclectic writing.
Duties:
- Review manuscripts under the direction of the Editor—this may include looking for potential themes, and using your familiarity with the content and style of Grain to determine whether pieces are a good fit for our journal
- Provide timely reports to the Editor on submissions that could qualify to be published
- Be available to communicate with the Editor (whether by email, telephone, or face to face) about submissions and offer suggestions for revisions
Qualifications:
- Copyediting experience
- Expertise in poetry—whether as a scholar, critic, or a published poet
- Experience working in creative team environments and must demonstrate a proven willingness to work cooperatively and collaboratively
This contract will last until December, 2012, with the possibility of extension. The position will require approximately 15 hours/month. Although the Grain office is in Saskatoon, the Associate Editor may reside anywhere within Saskatchewan.
Please send your résumé along with a cover letter that includes a brief statement explaining your philosophy of editing to the attention of the Editor, Grain Magazine, PO Box 67, Saskatoon, SK, S7K 3K1, Canada or to grainmag@sasktel.net. Applications for this position must be received by 4:30 p.m. April 20, 2012.
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MARCH 27, 2012
Short Grain contest deadline carried over to the following business day—April 2nd, 2012 (postmarked)!
Due to the original postmarked deadline falling on a Sunday, Grain Magazine has extended the 24th Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Writing Contest deadline to the following business day, Monday, April 2, 2012!
The 24th Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Writing Contest awards $4,500 in cash prizes! Winning entries will be published in the pages of Grain! The entry fee is $35 which includes a FREE one-year subscription to Grain Magazine! Our judges are counted among Canada's finest writers! One entry fee allows you to enter a maximum of two entries in either of two categories: Poetry in any form to a maximum of 100 lines; Short Fiction in any style to a maximum of 2500 words.
For full contest guidelines and details, visit our contest page!
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JANUARY 12, 2012
Grain Volume 39 No 1, Fall 2011, IMPOSTER, is on the way!
Check out the cover of our latest issue, IMPOSTER, which hits mailboxes and newsstands early February!
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DECEMBER 5, 2011
Grain Volume 38 No 4, Summer 2011, TRUTHS AND LIES, is officially SOLD OUT!
That's right! We're delighted (and saddened!) to announce that our summer issue has just sold out! Dedicated to the late Robert Kroetsch, TRUTHS AND LIES featured some astounding new writing by several poets who worked in longer forms or sequences. It included writings by Rachel Lebowitz, Sue Goyette, Kim Trainor, and Susan Andrews Grace, and also poetry in translation by Yang Jian and Wang Jiaxin. Add to that the latest installment of Jonathan Ball’s immensley popular Haiku Horoscopes, and the spectacular full-of-words-and-questions artwork by Ray Fenwick, this issue’s Featured Artist, and it's no wonder TRUTHS AND LIES flew off our shelves!
We here at Grain wish to send a big THANK YOU! out to all of our contributors from this issue, as well as all of our subscribers and all of those who picked us up off the newsstand. And, last but not least, a resounding THANK YOU! to the Editor of TRUTHS AND LIES, Sylvia Legris, for creating this stunning and one-of-a-kind issue.
To get your hands on other recent issues of Grain before they disappear, go to our Archives page before it's too late!
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OCTOBER 20, 2011
Congratulations to Zsuzsi Gartner, whose short-story collection, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, has made the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize short list! "Floating Like a Goat," one of the stories included in Better Living Through Plastic Explosives, was first published in Grain's Winter 2010 issue, TROPHY (on sale here). Zsuzsi was also the Fiction judge for our latest Short Grain (with Variations) Writing Contest (winners listed directly below)! Good luck, Zsuzsi!
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AUGUST 9, 2011
Grain announces the winners of the 23rd Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Writing Contest!
The results for Grain Magazine’s 2011 writing contest, Short Grain (with Variations) are in! Judges for this year’s contest were Zsuzsi Gartner, Fiction, and Jeramy Dodds, Poetry. Winning entries and judges’ comments will be published in Grain’s Winter 2012 issue, 39.2.
23rd Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Winners:
Fiction
1st Prize, $1000—Pete Duval of Philadelphia, PA, USA
2nd Prize, $750—Zack Haslam of Victoria, BC
3rd Prize, $500 —Zoey Peterson of Victoria, BC
Poetry
1st Prize, $1000—Tim Bowling of Edmonton, AB
2nd Prize, $750—Phoebe Wang of Toronto, ON
3rd Prize, $500 —Vincent Colistro of Victoria, BC
Congratulations to the winners!
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JULY 20, 2011
Grain's Summer 2011 cover sneak peek--hotter than a Canadian heat wave!
Check out the sizzling cover for Grain's Summer 2011 issue, TRUTHS AND LIES, featuring the incredible artwork of Canadian artist Ray Fenwick. Check out more of Ray's artwork on his website!
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JUNE 21, 2011
Grain takes home two Western Magazine Awards for nonfiction!
Congratulations to Chuqiao (Teresa) Yang whose nonfiction piece "Beijing Notes," which appeared in ALL OVER THE PLACE, our Summer 2010 issue, took first prize in two categories of the 2011 Western Magazine Awards: Student Writing and Gold Awards Best Article–Saskatchewan. Grain was also a finalist this year for Magazine of the Year, Saskatchewan.
Congratulations again to D.W. Wilson for his hat-trick of fiction nominations in this year's National Magazine Awards. Dave’s story “The Mathematics of Friedrich Gauss,” first published in SLIPSTREAM, Grain’s Spring 2010 issue, was just one of his three stories included in the list of 10 finalists. All three stories will be published in his much-anticipated short fiction collection, Once You Break a Knuckle, forthcoming this Fall with Hamish Hamilton Canada.
Congratulations to Beverly Akerman whose essay "Six Pixels of Separation,” published in Grain’s Summer 2010 issue, is a finalist in the in the Features category of the 2nd Annual Writing Awards of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC).
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MAY 11, 2011
Check out the cover of Grain's upcoming Spring 2011 issue, Honeysuckle! Art by Chris Kuzma!
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MAY 4, 2011
Grain recieves WMA and NMA nominations, and congratulations to recent Grain contributors Garth Martens, Shane Rhodes, and Steven Ross Smith!
Grain is a finalist in 3 categories of this year’s Western Magazine Awards, including Magazine of the Year—Saskatchewan. Congratulations to Chuqiao (Teresa) Yang whose piece “Beijing Notes,” published in ALL OVER THE PLACE, our Summer 2010 issue, is a finalist in 2 categories, Student Writing and Gold Article (Saskatchewan). The winners will be announced on June 17TH at the WMA ceremony in Vancouver.
In the National Magazine Awards, D.W. Wilson is a finalist for Fiction for his story “The Mathematics of Friedrich Gauss,” published in SLIPSTREAM, our Spring 2010 issue. Winners will be announced on June 10TH at the NMA Gala in Toronto.
Congratulations again to Garth Martens, who (as we predicted) is the winner of this year’s Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Garth made his poetic debut in LUDDITE, our Summer 2009 issue.
Shane Rhodes’ new poetry collection, Err, has just been published by Nightwood Editions. Poems in Err first appeared in UNRULY, our Fall 2010 issue.
Steven Ross Smith’s latest poetry collection, Fluttertongue 5, has just been published by Turnstone Press. Poems from this collection first appeared in our Spring 2010 issue, SLIPSTREAM.
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MARCH 23, 2011
Congratulations to recent Grain contributors Garth Martens, Jonathan Ball, and
Jeanne Randolph, who are making waves of their own!
A Big Toot of a Big Brilliant Horn to Garth Martens who is a finalist in this year’s Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Garth, we are proud to say, made his poetic debut in LUDDITE, our Summer 2009 issue. The winner will be announced on April 5th, and we will be rootin’ and tootin’ for Garth all the way!
May the future bring many prizes and lots of shiny new coins to our favourite Haiku Horoscopist(?), Jonathan Ball! Jonathan’s poetry collection Clockfire (Coach House Books) is nominated for a Manitoba Book Award. A sequence of poems from Clockfire first appeared in TROPHY, our Winter 2010 issue.
Jeanne Randolph, our beloved cultural theory guru, our trusty turtle-handler, will be at the Berton House Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City, Yukon, from April to the end of June, 2011. While there, Jeanne will be working on her book Art and the Godliness of Goods. Jeanne’s two essays “Heidegger’s Typewriter” and “A Nip before Dying” were published in LUDDITE, Summer 2009.
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MARCH 4, 2011
Less than one month left to enter Grain's 23rd Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Writing Contest!
Whose company do you want your writing to keep?
Enter the Short Grain writing contest! $4,500 in prizes to be won, and every entry receives a FREE one-year subscription to Grain Magazine! Full contest details and guidelines here. Don't delay - the deadline (postmarked) to enter is APRIL 1st, 2011!*****
Feast your eyes on the cover for Grain's upcoming Winter 2011 issue, ARSENAL:
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FEBRUARY 3, 2011
Grain struts its stuff at the 2011 AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Annual Conference.
Grain shows its beautiful face (and lovely insides) at the 2011 AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Annual Conference. Grain is one of the numerous literary magazines being displayed by NewPages at this year's AWP Conference in Washington, DC, February 2-5, 2011. If you're out that way, check out NewPages' bookfair tables D23 and D24.
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Jonathan Ball's Haiku Horoscopes to be reprinted in Geist!
Cool congratulations to Jonathan Ball whose Haiku Horoscopes included in UNRULY, our Fall 2010 issue, will be reprinted by Geist, both in their print magazine and on their website. Would you like your future divined divinely? Follow the stars to geist.com. More of Jonathan's Haiku Horoscopes will be in our explosive Winter Contest Issue, ARSENAL, due out soon!
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Zsuzsi Gartner story to appear in Best Canadian Fiction 2011!
Happy Helium Balloons to Zsuzsi Gartner whose story "Floating like a Goat," which first appeared in TROPHY (Winter 2010), will float its way into Best Canadian Fiction 2011, edited by John Metcalf. Zsuzsi's giddily anticipated new story collection, Better Living through Plastic Explosives, will be published this Spring by Penguin Group. (Yay!)
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Girlwood, new poetry by Jennifer Still, out soon!
Jennifer Still's much-lauded-in-advance poetry collection, Girlwood, is due out any day now with Brick Books. "Nest," one of the longer poems in Girlwood, made its first appearance in SLIPSTREAM, Grain's Spring 2010 issue.
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Krista Foss finalist for the 2010 Journey Prize!
Congratulations again to Krista Foss whose brilliant story "The Longitude of Okay" was a finalist for the most recent Journey Prize. Her story is included in Journey Prize Stories 22.
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NOVEMBER 29, 2010
Magazines Canada goes live with Buy 2, Get 1 FREE!
Magazines Canada's Buy 2 Get 1 FREE site is live and offering the subscription deal of the year! You can subscribe to any 3 magazines (like Grain!) and pay for only 2--it's like getting one free. Subscribe to the best that Canadian magazines have to offer--and it makes a great gift idea! Take advantage now!
*****NOVEMBER 19, 2010
23rd Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Contest guidelines posted!
Go to our contest page for the full guidelines for this year's Short Grain Writing Contest. $4,500 in prizes to be won! Deadline: April 1, 2011! Free subscription with every entry! Do not miss out!
*****AUGUST 9, 2010
Winners of Grain Magazine’s 22nd Short Grain (with Variations) Contest Announced!
The results for Grain Magazine’s 2010 contest, Short Grain (with Variations), are in. Judges for this year’s contest were Lee Henderson, Fiction, and Jennifer Still, Poetry. Winning entries and judges’ comments will be published in Grain’s Winter issue, Vol 38 No 2.
Fiction:
1st Prize, $1250— “Thomas and the Woman” by Jennifer Stone of Mineville, NS
2nd Prize, $750—“The Central Zoo” by Tsering Lama of Surrey, BC
1st Runner-up, $500—“The Stooker” by Jim Gerwing of Victoria, BC
2nd Runner-up, $500—“Leaving” by Susi Lovell of Montreal, QC
Poetry:
1st Prize, $1250—“Almost Postmodern” by Hector Williamson of Calgary, AB
2nd Prize, $750—“Still Life with White Roses” by Lisa Martin-DeMoor of Edmonton, AB
1st Runner-up, $500—“snow (stolen poems, for Orhan Pamuk)” by Sean Howard of Main-à-Dieu, NS
2nd Runner-up, $500—“Learning to speak and not to speak” by Lisa Martin-DeMoor of Edmonton, AB
All entrants receive a 1-year complimentary subscription to Grain Magazine beginning with our forthcoming Summer 2010 issue.
Congratulations to the winners!