News

Due to the large volume of submissions we now receive, we will close our submission manager to new unsolicited non-contest submissions this coming Friday, March 25th, at noon MDT. We will continue to accept contest entries through April 18th at 11:59pm.

We read each submission at least three times, but often a piece receives more reads, sometimes exceeding eight different reads. We read submissions so many times in part because we want to be careful and fair to each work and in part because Copper Nickel is a teaching journal, which is to say that, through and during the review process, we are always training Creative Writing students to be better readers and better editors. The amount of time and concentration required to do both means that, with our outgoing policy of accepting work year-round, some work takes several months to get through the review process—at times longer than we editors would be willing to wait if we were the writers.

Therefore, starting this fall, we will accept unsolicited work in two "windows," one opening on August 15th and closing on October 15th of each year and the other opening on January 31st and closing March 31st. Our hope is that these windows will enable us to better organize our reading and evaluation so that every submission will receive a timely reply.

Anna Journey's poem "Alarm (2)" from Copper Nickel 15 is featured today on Verse Daily. Check it out and, if you haven't yet, check out the whole issue, which includes two additional fresh Anna Journey poems.

Also, if you're in Denver, you can check out Anna on Thursday, April 7th, when she reads on the Auraria Higher Education Campus in North Classroom 1607. The reading is free and open to the public.

We've been talking about this for a while, but now it seems the coin is out of the purse—we've launched COIN, a web-based companion to Copper Nickel.

COIN will feature some of our favorites from back issues, along with interviews, conversations, commentary—including book reviews—and, in the coming months, audio and video goodies as well.

We'll be adding elements to COIN at least once a month, but probably more regularly, and twice a year we'll collect all the coinage in a pretty PDF format that will showcase the layout of Copper Nickel we're so proud of.

What are we thinking? you might ask.

Here's our official launch statement:

When the students at the University of Colorado Denver met in the Fall of 2001 to discuss the founding of a literary journal, the idea of the internet journal was fresh. You could have done anything, it seemed—and you could have done it on the cheap. But the students who would go on to establish Copper Nickel in the Spring of 2003 were students of books, first and foremost. They loved (and, one expects, still love) the afternoon in a used bookstore that would turn up early paperbacks of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror or Wise Blood or abandoned dreadnaughts, Ulysses and Infinite Jest, even, at times, a hardback whose latter pages hadn't been cut. They loved books, and they wanted to make books.

The venture of Copper Nickel has, then, always been to make a book—something to hold in the hand, something with a binding, with a spine, where the connection of one text to another has always been visible—even when every other year has brought another gust of paeans, telling us the book was dying, that there was no way to found a new title, a new journal, that reading was changing. We have worked through these storms to create 15 issues—with a 16th soon to follow.

Since the heft of the book has been a primary goal, we've always said about the website, about the presentation of content on the web, that's something we'll get to later, when we have more people, when web fonts get better, when...

So, when people have asked for some kind of sample of what we publish, when writers have asked Where can we read the sorts of things you like?, we've always said Buy a copy. It's cheap.

It still is cheap to buy a copy of an issue, even cheaper to buy a subscription, and we'd still encourage you to subscribe to keep our enterprise going—because when you buy a journal, you're not buying the paper and ink, you're supporting the work.

We're launching Coin as a companion to Copper Nickel, which we hope will remain an effort in print for years to come. Here, you will find samples of work we have published in Copper Nickel, and maybe these will make you into one of our readers. These samples will be accompanied by interviews, conversations, book-reviews, and audio and video presentations—documents that don't fit well into the format we've developed for Copper Nickel over the last eight years—which will be the main metal of this venture.

This material will be presented here in a traditional web format. Soon we will add to this a rich-PDF presentation that will flip like a book, however virtual. And when the time is right we'll add a tablet-native version.

Coin will be, like Copper Nickel, a work-in-progress.

We hope you'll stick with us as we move forward.

With apologies for not signaling this clearly before, but contest submissions should be submitted through the Contest Submissions Manager, which is accessible at http://www.copper-nickel.org/contest/smgr/

We need to keep the contest entries separate from the normal submission stream so we can keep track of payments and communicate with entrants more effectively. Sorry for an confusion or inconvenience.

The appropriate link is now visible on the guidelines page.

We're now accepting entries for our 2011 contests in Fiction and Poetry.

All submissions must be made electronically.

Like last year, we're offering a $1000 prize to one winner in each genre. Entrants get a one-year subscription (2 issues) with their $15 entry fee.

This year's judges are Daniel Alarcon, in fiction, and Kevin Prufer, in poetry.

Entries will be accepted through midnight on March 31, 2011. Finalists will be announced by May 15th. Winners will be announced on or before August 15th.

Full guidelines available at http://www.copper-nickel.org/contest/.

Copper Nickel 15 is on its way back from the press and should be in our offices this week. We'll ship subscribers' and contributors' copies the week of January 17th, and until January 17th, you can subscribe at our current low price of $14 for one year (two issues).

We're very excited about this issue, which features an essay by Alex Lemon, short fiction by Sean Bernard, Katherine Connor, Merrill Feitell, Kevin Kaworth, Dustin M. Hoffman, Hester Kaplan, Michael Martone, Stephanie Train, and our 2010 Fiction Contest Winner Robert Glick, and poetry by Sandra Beasley, Traci Brimhall, Curtis L. Crisler, J. P. Dancing Bear, Kyle G. Dargan, Adam Day, Natalie Eilbert, Tarfia Faizullah, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Suzanne Frischkorn, Anna Journey, Joshua Kalscheur, Marc McKee, Wayne Miller, Adam Million, Jenny Molberg, Nick Norwood, Soham Patel, Pablo Pschiera, Jon Pineda, Joshua Robbins, Anne Shaw, Sandra Simonds, Ashley Toliver, Jeffrey Thompson, Ross White, and our 2010 Poetry Contest Winner Susan Grimm, as well as a portfolio of art by Denver artists Carol Browning and Karen Roehl and debut publications of poems by Patrick Milian and a story by Kyle York.

We're celebrating the official release of the issue in Washington DC, where we'll be participating in the annual AWP Conference and Bookfair. In the Bookfair, we'll be rocking out Booth #626, and on Friday night, we'll be hosting a release event at the famed Black Cat at 1811 14th St. NW, featuring readings by Sandra Beasley, Kyle G. Dargan, Merrill Feitell, Anna Journey, David Keplinger, Michael Martone, and Wayne Miller. For more details on our AWP doings, follow this link.

ANNOUNCING our year-ending Subscription Drive---a 57 subscription rally that begins now and goes until we've received 57 new or renewing subscriptions. That would be one a day between now and December 29th, but we hope to beat that mark.

As always, our subscription prices are low---only $14 for two 232-page issues mailed to you, which is a little more than 25% off the cover price---and if you subscribe during this rally you'll get a bonus back issue when you receive your first issue.

Ready to sign up and help? Navigate over to http://www.copper-nickel.org/buy.html where you'll see your selections available for order by Paypal.

Don't want to use Paypal? Drop us a line at element29@copper-nickel.org and we'll set you up with another method.

Copper Nickel 14 is at the printers and should be in the offices next week. Subscribers' copies, contributors' copies, and preorders will ship on or about October 20th. If you're interested in grabbing a copy or a subscription, check in here.

This issue features a special translation feature, including work by Patrice de la Tour du Pin, translated by Jennifer Grotz; Simon Fruelund, translated by K. E. Semmel; Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei; Carsten René Nielsen, translated by David Keplinger; Henrik Nordbrandt, translated by Patrick Phillips; Eunice Odio, translated by Keith Ekiss and Mauricio Espinoza; Tomasz Rozycki, translated by Mira Rosenthal; Ales Steger, translated by Brian Henry; Su Tong, translated by Josh Stenberg; Menno Wigman, translated by Stephen Frech; Nachoem M. Wijnberg, translated by Alissa Valles.

This issue also presents new work by Christopher Ankney, Craig Beaven, Molly Beer, Daniel Borzutzky, Mark J. Brewin, Jr., Meghan Brinson, Matthew Brown, Michael Copperman, Nick Courtright, Carolina Ebeid, Melody S. Gee, Peter Grimes, Tyler Gross, Joshua Harmon, Joshua R. Helms, Ginny Hoyle, Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Andrew McFayden-Ketchum, Nick McRae, Matthew Minicucci, Rebecca Morey, Travis Michael Mossotti, Erica Nœss, Bonnie Tuyet Mai Nguyen, Rebecca Given Rolland, Josh Russell, Margot Schilpp, Rolin True, Jonathan Weinert, and Jennie Wrisley, and art by Lannie DeVuono.

Fiction judge Ron Carlson chose Robert Glick's "Hotel Grand Abyss" as the winner of our first fiction contest. Robert will receive his $1000 prize in the coming months, and his story will be featured in Copper Nickel 15, which will debut at AWP 2011 in Washington DC, February 3rd.

Carlson also singled out for special mention Rachel Smith's "Hotel," Nicole Louise Reid's "A Purposeful Violence" and Jacqueline Vogtman's "The Preservation of Objects Lost at Sea.

Poetry judge Natasha Trethewey chose Susan Grimm's poem, "If The Dead Could Just Hang Around." Susan will receive her $1000 prize in the coming months, and her poem will be featured in Copper Nickel 15. Trethewey also made special mention of Natalie Eilbert's "Archeology of Willendorf" and "Ascendency of Willendorf" as well as Adam Million's "When a Series of Pulses."

In the coming weeks, the editors will select work from the pool of finalists to accompany the winners in Copper Nickel 15

Entrants will begin their year's subscription with Copper Nickel 14 which goes to the printer next week and debuts in early October.

Next year's contest will open to entrants on January 31, 2011. Entries will be accepted through March 31, 2011. The fee for the 2011 contest will be $15 per entry; each entry will include a one-year subscription to Copper Nickel.

Thanks to all who entered the contest. It was a great pleasure to read the entries, and a great opportunity to enlarge our editorial family, if only for a short time.

The judge for the 2011 fiction contest will be Daniel Alarcon. The judge for the 2011 poetry contest will be Kevin Prufer. The prize for the winner in each genre will be $1000.

Here is a complete list of this year's finalists:

FICTION FINALISTS

"Life Study"
by David Meischen

"The Night Garden"
by Jeff Martin

"Aliens"
by Sean Bernard

"There's Something Else Now" by Alan Stewart Carl


"The Preservation of Objects Lost at Sea"
by Jacqueline Vogtman

"Hotel Grand Abyss"
by Robert Glick

"Trash"
by Iadee Hubbard

"A Purposeful Violence"
by Nicole Louise Reid

"Eye of the Night"
by Anne Earney

"Our Youthful Selves"
by Hester Kaplan

"Hotel" by Rachel Smith

POETRY FINALISTS

"Jacob's Ladder"
by Sarah McCartt-Jackson

"Archaeology of Willendorf / Ascendency of Willendorf"
by Natalie Eilbert

"When A Series of Pulses"
by Adam Million

"Photograph of Faulkner" 
by Jenny Molberg

"Her Hand, The Compass"
by Jenny Molberg

"When I Was A Child"
by Ann Fisher-Wirth

"Dear Ghost"
by Soham Patel

"Culture and Anarchy"
by Anna Leahy

"The Epidemics of Desire" 
by Tarfia Faizullah

"At Zarha's Salon for Ladies"
by Tarfia Faizullah

"A Patterning of Fire, a Gathering of Ash"
by Joshua Robbins

"I'm Singing This Poem"
by Curtis Crisler

"If the Dead Could Just Hang Around" by Susan Grimm

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.