After more than a month of reading and re-reading and debating and comparing, we now have a list of finalists for our fiction and our poetry contests. E-mails are going out to all who entered.

To protect the integrity of the process, we are announcing only the titles of the finalist entries, and not the names of the authors, so these will remain hidden from the final judges. We will update this list, announcing the names of finalists once a decision has been received from each of the judges in late August.

FICTION FINALISTS

"Life Study"
"The Night Garden"
"Aliens"
"There's Something Else Now"
"The Preservation of Objects Lost at Sea"
"Hotel Grand Abyss"
"Trash"
"A Purposeful Violence"
"Eye of the Night"
"Our Youthful Selves"
"Hotel"

POETRY FINALISTS

"Jacob's Ladder"
"Archaeology of Willendorf / Ascendency of Willendorf"
"When A Series of Pulses"
"Photograph of Faulkner"
"Her Hand, The Compass"
"When I Was A Child"
"Dear Ghost"
"Culture and Anarchy"
"The Epidemics of Desire"
"At Zarha's Salon for Ladies"
"A Patterning of Fire, a Gathering of Ash"
"I'm Singing This Poem"
"If the Dead Could Just Hang Around"

Stay tuned for more updates from the contest.

Thanks to all who entered our first contest. We are no longer accepting entries and turn to the difficult task of selecting finalists. We will notify entrants about the finalists by the end of June and forward those to the final judges for selection. Winners will be announced by the end of August.

Because Monday, May 31, is a postal holiday, we will accept entries through our online system through 11:59pm on Tuesday, June 1, and an entry with associated entry fee postmarked by June 2.

Yes, you submitted work before we switched to our online submission manager system. We read it---actually four times, which is what we do with every submission---and we e-mailed our response.

We're sorry you didn't receive our response. Sometimes this happens. Many ISPs have recently adopted spam-blocking measures that, for whatever reason, may have blocked our message. Sometimes individual users have chosen more aggressive spam-blocking measures, resulting in, for whatever reason, our messages ending up in the "Bulk Mail" or "Spam" folder.

We suspect, too, that someone else, unrelated to us, also with the same hosting provider we used, was sending out a lot of e-mail, resulting in IP blacklisting and subsequent e-mail blocking.

Once we suspected this, we changed hosting providers and e-mail protocols.

We have tried.

We switched to the online system precisely to avoid the current situation.

And we have tried to e-mail you on several occasions, but we can't always tell when an e-mail is blocked.

Please accept our apologies. We treated your submission well.

You probably won't receive this e-mail message either, but please know it wasn't because of what we did or did not do.

We do value every author and every author's work, and we hope you'll try us again.

Sincerely,

The Editors

We've opted to extend our contest entry deadline to May 31st. We're still eager to see your work. Full details here: http://www.copper-nickel.org/contest/

Thanks to Sima Rabinowitz and the folks at New Pages for their review of Copper Nickel 12, which captures the thematizing push of our editorial program so nicely.

Copper Nickel 12 isn't a theme issue, but a theme of sorts emerges nonetheless, or at least an organizing principle that is highly appealing and largely successful - how do we relate to the things, the stuff, the variety and quantity of forms and objects around us, human and non-human.

The review closes with as good a recommendation as I've read in a while, one that makes me happy that we're not the only ones singing the praise:

As far as lists of the things we connect to and which populate our environment go, add Copper Nickel to the list of things you intend to read soon.

Very briefly, we want to thank all of you who came to Denver and played with us and chatted with us over the weekend. It was a wonderful time for us, and we hope it was for you.

For those of you who found our advice helpful, you're welcome. Let's do it again some time.

If you missed us, it's not too late (never too late) to subscribe for the same low price: $13.

Some of you loved the new t-shirts. We'll have another batch of them for sale in another week or two.

Meanwhile, see what other AWPers are saying about CN:

• "The folks at Copper Nickel deserve a huge shout out for their tireless support of this year's fabulous conference."
• It was a great event, and a great space and turnout, and I was thrilled to be in such company. Thanks to everyone who organized and attended it!
• "The AWP conference and book fair provided the chance for representatives of the writing programs in Colorado, small presses (including Fulcrum Books, Unbridled Books, and Elixir Press), literary magazines (including the University of Colorado at Denver's Copper Nickel and CSU's Colorado Review), and bookstores in the area to gather under one roof for a few days."

Other Mentions:

• Rarely Likeable
• Examiner
• What Does Not Kill Me
• Sturgeon's Law

During the AWP Conference, Copper Nickel will present an audible edition of the journal featuring past contributors---including Hadara Bar-Nadav, Peter Cooley, Mike Copperman, Alyson Hagy, James Hoch, Soham Patel, Deborah Poe, and Aurelie Sheehan---on Saturday, April 10th, beginning at 8:00pm at the Denver Press Club, 1330 Glenarm (just 2 blocks from the Convention Center). The event is free and open to all comers.

Check back here for a table of contents, coming soon.

Look for us in the mix: we're hosting the second part of this extravaganza on Saturday, April 10...

Some of you who are coming to Denver for AWP might be interested to know (and you probably didn't know) that Denver is home to a burgeoning hand-made movement, and Create Denver Week, one of its creatures, sanctioned by the city, begins on Saturday with a pop-up market just blocks from the convention center, described thus by the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs:

Create Denver Commons: Paper Art + Pop-Up Market
Produced by DOCA + Brian Corrigan
Pop-Up Market by Samuel Schimek of 15 min.
Sat, April 10 - Sat, April 17 11:00AM - 7:00PM
1600 Glenarm Place, Ste. 110 (across from the Paramount Theater)

Using this premium storefront space, DOCA will create an "economic garden" installation and pop-up store that visually represents growing Denver's creative sector. The installation will be designed by local professional artists and seeks to engage the community by asking them to help contribute to the garden participating in flower making workshops. All made from recycled paper, the installation will include flowers, garlands, garden monsters and laser cut cardboard cutouts.

Samuel Schimek, creative mind behind 15 min., will champion the Create Denver Pop-Up Store that will feature 100% Denver designed goods. Examples of merchandise are clothing, furniture, books, posters, art and jewelry.

In addition, we will continue to engage the public by inviting them to write their ideas on how to grow Denver's creative economy at designated areas in the space during both the flower making sessions and the pop-up store hours. We will capture this information on large pieces of white butcher paper that will later be used in future Create Denver endeavors.

Here's how Samuel himself describes it:

Installation of the POP-Up store is underway now. We are gathering great products designed in Denver to be featured in the store. Construction of the store is almost entirely of recycled cardboard boxes!

The Store opens April 10th and is open until April 17th. Business hours will be 11am - 7pm daily! Visitors can enjoy artwork, clothing, jewelry, paper products, and many other items all from Denver designers and artists.