© Copyright 2013 Pushcart Press
This year, The Missing Slate is nominating work for the Pushcart Prize for the very first time. Organized by the Pushcart Press in New York, the prize has been described as “the most honored literary project in America”, and previous winners include Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Muldoon, Raymond Carver and Junot Diaz.
Magazines are allowed to nominate up to 6 pieces, and we’ve decided to send 3 poems and 3 short stories.
Our Nomination Process
We’ve published a lot of top-quality original work this year, and narrowing everything down to just 6 pieces was always going to be difficult. So difficult that we thought it would be best to ask for some help from our readers…
We started by asking our editorial team for nominations, and the pieces with the most nominations moved forward to two shortlists: a poetry shortlist with 5 poems, and a fiction shortlist with 5 short stories. Now we’re asking you to choose which pieces receive our final nomination.
We ran fiction and poetry polls on our Facebook page, and the pieces with the most votes (the top 3 poems and the top 3 short stories) are the pieces we’ll be sending forward to Pushcart Press. The nominees are
Fiction Nominees
Ester, by Lorna Brown (USA) *digital exclusive
The Charivari, by Rob Ross (Canada)
Freedom and Democracy, by Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou (Greece)
Poetry Nominees
Karachi, by Mehvash Amin (Pakistan)
Like Any Good Indian, by Shikha Malaviya (India)
Camp X-Ray, by Ravi Shankar (USA/India)