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Emily Wortman-Wunder is the 2018 Innovative Short Fiction Contest winner

Maryse Meier has made her decision. Emily Wortman-Wunder‘s “Endangered Fish of the Colorado River” is this year’s Innovative Short Fiction Contest winner!

Emily Wortman-Wunder lives in Denver, Colorado. Her work has appeared in Vela, Nimrod, Terrain, High Country News, and many other places.

This year’s finalists were Suzanne Burns, Chelsea HarrisMarlene OlinN. Page, and Francine Witte. Maryse Meijer had this to say about the winning story:

“‘Endangered Fish of the Colorado River’ is a moving meditation on parental and ecological grief, an exceptionally accomplished examination of losses big and small. Restrained, precise, and wise, the author shows us how, in the attempt to save something, we risk losing everything.”

 
—Maryse Meijer, contest judge and author of Heartbreaker

Emily’s story will be published in The Conium Review: Vol. 7. She also receives a $500 prize, five contributor copies, and a copy of Maryse Meijer’s latest book.

Thanks to all who submitted to this year’s contest. We’ll be announcing next year’s judge soon. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed about these calls for submissions and news from The Conium Review and Conium Press.

Editor Update: James R. Gapinski’s 2018 Book Tour

Join The Conium Review‘s managing editor, James R. Gapinski, as he celebrates the release of Edge of the Known Bus Line (Etchings Press, University of Indianapolis). Later this month, James embarks on a five-state reading tour, with stops in Seattle, Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Portland.

The tour kicks off on August 29th with a featured reading at the Two Hour Transport series in Seattle. Next stop is Boswell Books in Milwaukee. Then James visits Chicago for a conversation with former contributor and recent contest judge Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker (FSG) and Northwood (Black Balloon Publishing). In Minneapolis, James reads with local and visiting authors Maya Beck, Madeline Reding, Kathryn Savage, and Erin Sharkey. Finally, James returns home for a reading in Portland. Full book tour details, Facebook links, and other information is available on James R. Gapinski’s author page.

EOTKBL Book Tour flyer (compressed)

Call for Submissions: “The Conium Review: Vol. 6” open reading period

The Conium Review is reading for Volume 6 between January 1st, 2017 and April 1st, 2017! We like strange stories, inventive language, bizarre characters, and innovative conceits. Show us what you got.

Past contributors include Shane Jones (author of The Crystal EatersLight Boxes, and Daniel Fights a Hurricane), Maryse Meijer (author of Heartbreakers), and Zach Powers (author of Gravity Changes). We’ve also published many emerging writers, including some first-time authors. In the end, we don’t care what your CV says; we just wanna see something good on the page.

Work published in The Conium Review has been featured in the Best Small Fictions anthology, the Plougshares “Best Short Story” column, the Wigleaf Top 50 long-list, and elsewhere. Full guidelines are found here.

All submissions should go through our Submittable page (e-mailed submissions will be deleted unread).

Introducing the Vol. 5 authors

The Conium Review: Vol. 5 comes out later this year. We’ve finalized the table of contents, and we’re pleased to introduce the authors and stories slated for this issue:

  • “Birth,” by Jessica Roeder
  • “Copy Machine,” by Samantha Duncan
  • “The Solitude of Fruit,” by Liz Kellebrew
  • “Ruby Goes In,” by Kate Gies
  • “Gazebo,” by Shane Jones
  • “The Mother,” by Kathryn Hill (winner of the 2016 Innovative Short Fiction Contest)
  • “United Parcel Service,” by Emily Koon
  • “Tiny Little Goat,” by Jasmine Sawers
  • “Once Upon a Time in an Orchard,” by Jasmine Sawers
  • “Rain Cloud,” by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
  • “Her Blood,” by Maryse Meijer

ABOUT THE CONIUM REVIEW: VOL. 5 AUTHORS

Jessica Roeder lives in Duluth, Minnesota, where she teaches writing and dance. Her work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Third Coast, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has received a Pushcart Prize and a McKnight Artist Fellowship.

Samantha Duncan‘s latest poetry chapbook is The Birth Creatures (Agape Editions, 2016), and her fiction has appeared in Meridian, The Pinch, and Flapperhouse. She serves as Executive Editor for ELJ Publications and reads for Gigantic Sequins, and she lives in Houston.

Liz Kellebrew holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She lives in Seattle and writes fiction, poetry, literary essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Coachella Review, Elohi Gadugi, Mount Island, Vine Leaves, Section 8, The Pitkin Review, and Beyond Parallax.

Kate Gies lives in Toronto, where she writes and teaches creative non-fiction at George Brown College. Her work has most recently appeared in Word Riot and Ascent Aspirations Magazine.

Shane Jones is the author of the novels Light Boxes (Penguin, 2010), Daniel Fights a Hurricane (Penguin, 2012), and Crystal Eaters (Two Dollar Radio, 2014). Fiction and non-fiction has been published by VICE, The Paris Review Daily, Washington Square Review, LIT, The Portland Review, The Believer Logger, Quarterly West, and DIAGRAM. He lives in upstate New York.

Kathryn Hill is an MFA candidate in fiction at Arizona State University where she also reads prose for Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her flash fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at AGNI Online, Gigantic Sequins, Monkeybicycle, Passages North, and elsewhere. She has creative nonfiction forthcoming in an anthology from Outpost19. Follow her on Twitter at @kathelizhill

Emily Koon is a fiction writer from North Carolina. She has work in Potomac Review, The RumpusPortland Review and other places. She can be found at twitter.com/thebookdress.

Originally from Buffalo, New York, Jasmine Sawers now lives and writes in Lexington, Kentucky.

Ingrid Jendrzejewski likes cryptic crosswords, the game of go and the python programming language, among other things. Links to her work can be found at www.ingridj.com and she occasionally tweets from @LunchOnTuesday. Recently, she was awarded the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction and the Bath Flash Fiction Award.

Maryse Meijer‘s work has appears in or at Joyland, Meridian, The Dallas Review, The Portland Review, St. Ann’s Review, 580 Split, and elsewhere. Her collection of stories, Heartbreaker, was published by FSG as part of their Paperback Originals series.