Million Writers Award Top Ten Stories

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Here they are: The 2011 storySouth Million Writers Award top ten online stories!

The public vote for last year's best online story is now open through July 6, 2011. Readers and writers may vote one time for their favorite by clicking here.

As a reminder, the prizes for this year's award are:

  • First place: $600 plus the $100 gift certificate from ThinkGeek
  • Runner-up: $200
  • Honorable mention/third place: $100

I also apologize for the delays in releasing these stories and starting the public vote. I swear that one issue after another has popped up with this year's award, starting with my eye problems and continuing onward from there.

The most recent problem involved one of our judges. In years past I've been the sole judge, reading all the notable stories and picking my ten favorites. This year, though, I invited two others to join me in this duty. Everything was looking good until one of these judges decided she no longer wanted to be a judge.

You see, she was worried what a writing friend would say because she hadn't picked this friend's story from the notable list. Even though this judge had already turned in her picks, and even though I promised her anonymity, at the last minute she demanded I remove her and not use her selections. Naturally this lead to irritated words flying back and forth, along with a promise by me to one day write a scathing essay about how flakey some writers can be.

The outcome of all this was a scamble to fill the selection void left by this person "unjudging" herself.

Anyway, please let me publicly thank my fellow judge, a non-trifling, extremely reliable, hell of a guy named D. Antwan Stewart. In addition to serving as a preliminary judge for a number of years with the Million Writers Award, Steward is the author of The Terribly Beautiful (2006) and Sotto Voce (2008), both Editor's Choice Selections in the Main Street Rag Poetry Chapbook Series. His recent poems appear in The Best Gay Poetry 2008, Callaloo, Meridian, Many Mountains Moving, Verse Daily and others. He is an assistant editor for the online poetry journal Anti- and lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he waits tables while working on his first full-length poetry manuscript.

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys reading the top ten stories and votes for their favorite.

<ul>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.friggmagazine.com/issuetwentynine/fiction/buter/hell.htm">Hell Dogs</a>" by Daphne Buter (FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and  Poetry) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/arvies/">Arvies</a>" by Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/2010/11/short-fiction-the-green-book-by-amal-el-mohtar/">The Green Book</a>" by Amal El-Mohtar (Apex Magazine) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://sporkpress.com/weeklies/prose/archives/00000083.html">Do You Have a Place for Me</a>" by Roxane Gay (Spork Press) </a> </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/afiction-046.html">Here is David, the Greatest of Descendants</a>" by Spencer  Kealamakia (Anderbo) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.eclectica.org/v14n3/maroney.html">The Incorrupt Body of Carlo Busso</a>" by Eric Maroney  (Eclectica) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v9n2/fiction/mason_n/cancer_page.shtml">Cancer Party</a>" by Nicola Mason (Blackbird) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2010/arthur-arellano">Arthur Arellano</a>" by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Narrative Magazine) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring-2010/fiction-elegy-for-a-young-elk-by-hannu-rajaniemi/">Elegy for a Young Elk</a>" by Hannu Rajaniemi (Subterranean  Magazine) </li>
    <li>"<a href="http://www.barrelhousemag.com/?p=44">Most  of Them Would Follow Wandering Fires</a>" by Amber Sparks (Barrelhouse) </li>
  </ul>