Each year, the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press (MWCP) publishes winners of its chapbook contest. The purpose of the press is to help writers publish their first book in a literary genre. Poetry, short-story collections, and works of creative nonfiction will be considered.
Selections are based on literary merit, not genre. In past years, MWCP has published up to three winners. Readers specializing in each genre carefully consider and jury each eligible submission.
This year, judges for the Cooperative Press Chapbook Contest are three celebrated authors: Laura Kasischke (poetry), Keith Taylor (fiction), and Matt Rigney (creative non-fiction). These respected writers will make final decisions and provide blurbs for each of the winning entries.
Laura Kasischke has published nine widely-read novels and eight poetry collections. Among her many honors, Kasischke’s latest poetry collection, Space, in Chains, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has won several Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from a range of institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan.
Keith Taylor has published stories, essays, and poems in magazines throughout North America and Europe. He has published five chapbooks of poetry, a collection of stories, and several edited anthologies. Among his long list of honors, his book Guilty at the Rapture (Hanging Loose Press, 2006) was chosen as one of the Michigan Notable Books of the Year for 2007 by the Library of Michigan. Taylor currently coordinates the undergraduate program in creative writing at the University of Michigan, directs the Bear River Writers Conference, and serves as poetry editor at Michigan Quarterly Review.
Matt Rigney is the author of In Pursuit of Giants: One Man’s Global Search for the Last of the Great Fish, a rigorously researched exploration of sport-fishing and the surviving great fish of the world’s oceans. As Rigney’s first work of non-fiction, the book has garnered much praise from environmental groups and powerful literary voices. Peter Matthiessen described In Pursuit of Giants as “a very timely and important book, impressively thorough in the extent of its research.” Rigney has also been published in the Brownstone Review, The Boston Globe, and The Huffington Post and Orion Online.
Full contest guidelines.