Deadline extended to April 20!

Flyway’s annual Sweet Corn contest is now open for submissions!

New this year, Flyway is accepting submissions in poetry and short fiction for the annual contest. Winners in both genres receive a $500 prize, publication in Flyway, and a box of organic Iowa sweet corn. Runners-up receive $50 and publication.

Our guest fiction judge this year is Daniel Wallace, author of five novels, including Big Fish (1998), which was adapted into a 2003 film directed by Tim Burton and starring Ewan McGregor. Wallace is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Creative Writing Program.

Our inaugural guest poetry judge is Ned Balbo, author of three books of poetry:  Galileo’s Banquet (1998), which shared the Towson University Prize for Literature; Lives of the Sleepers (2005), which won the Ernest Sandeen Prize; and The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (2010), selected for the Donald Justice Prize and the 2012 Poets’ Prize. Balbo taught for 24 years in Loyola University’s writing program, and is currently a visiting professor in the creative writing program at Iowa State University, Flyway’s base of operation.

The Sweet Corn prize recognizes exceptional fiction and poetry with a focus on the intersection of human experience and the environment—works that examine place, natural and built environments, landscapes and cityscapes, and the ways that people transverse them. We’re happy to read work that explores environmental issues, but also seek writing that interprets environment more broadly—the places people live and work, travel to and from, inhabit and transcend. Most of all, we’re looking for work that moves us, that gives us a fresh lens with which to view the world. Want to hear more? Read the winning essay from our 2014 Notes from the Field non-fiction contest, “House Blend” by Susannah Clark, which examines the author’s place in a gentrifying Boston neighborhood in the wake of the Marathon bombings.

Submit short fiction of up to 5,000 words or up to three poems (as a single document) to the contest. Enter author’s name, bio and contact information through Submittable’s cover page; author name should not appear anywhere on the submission. Entry fee is $12. Contest closes April 16 April 20.

Submit online at flyway.submittable.com, and read our latest issue at flyway.org!