Episode 7: Awards
K:
Hello, all my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be. Thank you for tuning in this week to the Writers Triangle. And today I am super excited. I have a huge announcement, and you’re going to hear it here first. We have created two awards, and I am super, super excited about the two awards. The first award we created is the Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections Award for Excellence in Poetry. I’m going to talk about that award first first, and then I’ll be – excuse me, – I’ll be talking about Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections Prize for Short Storytelling. The reason that I came up with the idea for the excellence and poetry award is I’ll be honest: there are some poets that I just absolutely love their writing and think they’re amazing and believe that they were award worthy. And I felt like a lot of the awards are so entrenched, that you have to be traditionally published, you have to be known in the literary world. And there’s just so many hoops that you have to jump through. And I feel like the the entry level, how do I even get to a place where I can enter myself in these awards? A lot of them are really expensive. And for me, I feel like if you’re a struggling writer, not everyone has – so I did the math when I was looking at creating poetry award. And if you want, some of them were expensive, were as expensive as $1,000 to enter. And I looked up the poets who had chapbooks who had entered and won, and not all of them did I see a blip in how the award affected their ability to be published, affected the readership of their writing, or any of that.
K:
And that’s like, wow, $1,000 is a lot of money. And I looked at other and – I was like, for me, I thought, what are you getting for that $1,000. And I was like, that’s a lot. And the, you know, the purse is $1500. So you get paid $500 basically, if you win. And it feels to me, those kinds of awards, to me feel exploitative, and they feel like a cash grab. And I don’t think for me, I don’t think awards should be a cash grab. And I also don’t think award should be a way to drive up membership. A lot of the poetry associations, and I don’t fault this – I don’t fault them for this, and I’m not mad at them. I just don’t agree with them. A lot of the poetry societies stipulate that to be eligible for x y z award, you have to be a member of their society. And that requires membership dues for some of them, and requires participation. Because when you look at the winners list, nine times out of 10, it’s somebody who’s a member. And so when they have a fee for non members to enter, the person who is a member already has a leg up. And for me, I just feel like, okay, so if I want to succeed, and if I want to get awards as a poet, I have to belong to all of these societies. And that racks up the dollar signs rather quickly. Or I have to pay to enter my work. And that racks up the dollar signs rather quickly. And then what do you get for this award? And I was looking at what do you get for the award and I wasn’t turned on.
K:
It wasn’t exciting to me. It wasn’t exhilarating. And I admit I’m not a poet. I don’t write poetry. I could be completely wrong. Mentorship by a famous poet who has a well known name, that might be really exciting. But a lot of poets don’t need mentorship. And having to do a year long mentorship with somebody or four month long mentorship with somebody – that’s going to that’s if you win the award, the prize is you have to go to a Master’s class on poetry. That may be inviting to some, but not to all. Another thing that they would get is just the award. And I was like, okay, so where’s the exposure with the award? You get the award, you get announced. And then that’s it. That doesn’t feel quite worth the price of entry to me. I don’t know, I could be completely wrong, some of these awards might blow people up larger than life. And there are some poets who have – who these awards have had this effect. And then there are other poets that these awards don’t have that effect. One thing I did also in creating the poetry awards is I looked at Maya Angelou’s career, and I looked at all of the awards, she had won. And I did a timeline of her career. And she won more awards after becoming famous than she did before she was famous. So what does an award do to a famous poet, or for a famous poet? And I feel like that keeps the fame going. And that’s awesome. But what about poets who aren’t quite yet famous, but are still really good. And I think poetry is a hard gig, I loved Def Jam, poet, Def Jam poetry. I don’t want to talk about Russell Simmons, he’s problematic. But Def Jam poetry was not problematic. And I’m not doing that whole thing of separating the art from the artist. None of the artists were related to Russell Simmons or his enterprise. I love Def Poetry jam because the poems were so fun and so great. And I thought it was a great way to get poetry out there. And it was unknown poets. And that was a catalyst. A lot of the poets went on to get to signed for chapter book deals, and TED talks and things of that nature. Not all of them did, it was hit and miss.
K:
And so I thought, well, I’m not as big as Def Poetry jam by any means. I’m not as big as any of the poetry societies that are out there. But I have my own little corner, my own little spot, and my own little reach, and my own little sphere of people who know about me and know about what we’re doing and are into what we’re doing. So I thought, why not start my own poetry award? I have all of these relationships with really great poets on – primarily on social media, that I’m becoming huge fans of, so why not do an award. And this year is our inaugural award for poetry works, published in 2021, and has to have been published by December 31. And I’ll be honest, I kind of want to do an invitation only for the first award, because I do have a poet who’s near and dear to my heart. And I feel like if they would submit a piece of writing, that I would be prone to give the – I would be biased. Now, for the 2022 year, it’s not going to be invitation only, it’s going to be open to the public. And the only rule that I have is that it be published poetry. And what I consider published poetry is you can publish it on a blog, you can publish it on your website, you can publish it on medium, you can publish it – have it published in a chat book, in a magazine. It just has to exist somewhere in the world because I didn’t want to tax poets with writing an original piece of poetry, just for the award. Because that kind of flies in the face of what we’re trying to do here. And the award does come with some cash, which I’m really happy about.
K:
It comes with 250 United States dollars. And it does come with a writing request and that request is for original poems created just for the e-zine, and a poet and residents for the e-zine. And being a poet in residence for the e-zine. It’s basically you’re on – not basically it’s exactly, you’re on the landing page of Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections for four months. And you’re featured in the magazine for four months, hence four poems, and all of the short stories and poems will be based on the theme that your poem is about. And the person will have because we’ll be announcing In April, the poems will be due by September for the January issue. I think we’re doing poetry first. No, January, February, March, April, it’ll be due for the sorry, poetry will be due in December for the four months of May, June, July, and August. And the short stories one will be January, February, March, and April. So the short stories will be due in September, the poetry will be due in December. All of the details will be on the – the Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections website for due dates, and all of those types of things. And how to submit poets for the poetry for the award, the 2021 submission is closed, because it’s invitation only. But I’m talking about it to let people know about it for the 2022 year. So when you’re putting poetry out there, just kind of think about us because the award for poetry is free and open to all poets. Like I said, the work has to be published, but that’s on medium or your author’s website, or a blog, or in a magazine, or in a chapbook. And it’s a single poem. And there’s only one you can only enter one poetry, one poetry, one poem, per poet. And the poems must be, like I said before, published by December 31. And all poems must be primarily in English, because that’s the only language I speak, and Japanese poetry structure.
K:
So I can read Japanese, and I can speak some Japanese, but Japanese poetry structure and convention, I don’t feel like I have expertise in it. I feel like in English that… my comprehensive English is good enough that I can read poetry, and I’ve read enough poetry in English, that I know what I think is an excellent poem. And what makes an excellent poem for me is kind of like what makes a good anything is intention. And does your poem communicate that intention? So intentionality, and there’s no particular style of poem that has more weight than other styles upon, so you can submit a haiku. If you submit a specific style of poetry, and you say that it is that style of poetry, and it does not meet that styles convention, you can’t win. If you just submit a poem and say, this is my poem, then there are no conventions that need to be followed. And we don’t, right now, we don’t take poems that are written by more than one author. We may in the future, but right now, I think because the award is just getting up and running, I feel like to authors is twice the work to manage. And… we can’t accept any corrections after the submission. So if your poem has spelling errors, has grammatical errors that are not intentional, then it’s probably not going to be a winning poem, unfortunately. And just so everybody knows if you work for Cinnabar, Moth Publishing or Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections, or our sister press that is helping us with those any other presses that we draw in or literary magazines that we draw in. If you’re an officer, an employee on the advisory board member, you’re not eligible because we just want to keep it fair.
K:
So that is the excellence in poetry and what we confirm by email, we announce on social media. And I’m super, super excited because in addition to the $250 you also receive a medallion that can be placed on social media that can – it’s an award seal that says Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections Excellen- Excellence in Poetry. Sorry. It’s a bit of a tongue twister, isn’t it? Excellence in poetry. I’ll say it one more time. Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections Award for Excellence in Poetry. I’m so excited, I’m tripping over my words. And I think that’s really cool. Because you can put it on your social media, you can put it on your blog, you can put it on the poem that won. And of course, you’ll have the write up, and your residency and all of that, that will also linked – will have out links to all of your social media information. So that’s really exciting. That is for the excellence in poetry. The second award that we’ve created is the Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections Prize for Short Storytelling. And I am so excited about this, when we did the anthology. So my whole life, I have been a huge fan of short stories, and I just absolutely love, love, love short stories. I love to read them, I enjoy writing them, although I don’t enjoy publishing them. Every now and then, I’ll have one that I really enjoy that I’ll publish in the e-zine. And I have two that I published in the anthology, because I’m the publisher, and I can. Which I know may seem unfair, but I’m always clear that my work doesn’t take the spot of a different author’s work. So I always count mine as a zero submission kind of thing. Unless for whatever reason, our submissions fall short for the theme. And then either myself, Chad, Rasta or some other member of the Cinnabar Moth team will of course step in and fill the void. Because we have to have a full magazine kind of thing. But we don’t have to do that too often knock on wood, everyone’s into our theme so far, which is really exciting. And that brings me back around to the award.
K:
So, what do you get if you win? Basically, you get the same thing as the winner of the poetry you get a cash prize of $250 USD, United States dollars, you get a four month author residency for January, February, March and April, where you’ll write four stories on any topic about anything that you want to write between 3000 and 3500 words, and then that will set the theme for those four months, and you will be the author in residence plus be promoted as the prize winner. And you’ll have – just like with the poetry award – you’ll have a lifetime listing. For the life of the literary collections website, you’ll always be listed as a former Prize winner. So when you’re – so for the four months of your residency for the poetry and the short stories, you’re on the landing page of the website. After your residency is over, and for any author in residence, you roll over into the internal pages for authors in residence. The award winners will have an extra page where they roll over not only to the resident page, but they also roll over to the awards page. And when I was researching awards, what I found was that once someone wins an award, it is easier for them to win other awards. Once you’re an award winner, the literary world just kind of perks up and says hmm, well, we want to get in on this good stuff, too. And if this press is saying, or if this magazine is saying that this person is award worthy, then maybe we should check them out. And some awards, like the American Library Association, to win any of their awards, you have to be invited. And Chad was fortunate enough to be invited to submit, Not My Ruckus to for an award with – through the American Library Association. And that was really exciting to receive that invitation.
K:
And we received subsequent invitations. And I’m not blasting other awards, and I don’t have Chad’s permission to go into the details of everything that he’s been invited to submit to. But that’s been a really exciting process to have one of our authors invited and that was one of the reasons why, for the first year, I wanted it to be an invitation. I wanted the familiarity with the author, I wanted the comfort and knowledge that they would turn in the four stories, and that they would want to participate in all of the responsibilities that go along with the awards. In addition to that, both winners are interviewed on the Writers Triangle podcast, I wanted to make sure that they would follow through on that commitment as well. So with the award, we get something, and you get something. You get 250 bucks, you get published, you get four stories published, you get to be on landing page. And you get to be on on our internal pages for the life of the website. And you also get this really cool seal on this really cool medallion that says you’re a winner, baby. And that’s exciting for me, for authors to be able to collect accolades and say, I won this award, I won this prize is another way to celebrate authors. And that’s really what’s going on with the press right, is I want to celebrate authors, and I want to celebrate voices that I feel aren’t getting the attention they deserve. And… that means that a lot of the winners may not be famous already, but I think are stars on the rise.
K:
So for year one, we’re announcing later, so I’m not announcing them today because I don’t want to overshadow the announcement. Because this is coming out as the announcement of the award. I wanted to make sure that the first two winners were people that I had a close connection with their work, and whose work I wanted to see more of in the world. And the reason we’re opening it up to an open call next year, is I feel like having a year of promoting the award, that there’s a better chance of us getting really high quality works and diversified works, where it’s not just authors that we know. So that was a big part of the decision for this year for it to be authors, we know because I’m heavily biased. And I’ll be honest, if our two winners had turned in anything, I don’t know if they could have drawn my attention – if anyone else could have pulled my attention away from them because I’m already such a huge fan of their writing. And I also wanted to give the team that’s making up the board time to gel time to get to know each other and make sure that they have room in their calendar to commit to being on the award board. And that’s why I’m not announcing who’s on the board yet. Because some of the people we’ve invited, they said I hope I have enough time if I have enough time. Because everyone on the board with the exception of myself has a full time job outside of publishing.
K:
And that may change we may need to find people whose full time gig is just publishing, because they’re so busy with their own endeavors. So it’s about who can we put together as the board, and I don’t know that the board will be the same every year. But I do know that the board will be people who have professional expertise in the field of poetry, and have professional expertise in the field of short story. I believe that I have professional expertise in both because of how much reading of both I’ve done and my own education in terms of the research I’ve done and the coursework I’ve done at university to educate myself on these two specific genres. And I feel like I know enough to know what I don’t know. And I also know enough to know that convention isn’t always the way to go. And that you can break the rules, and you can have something outside of convention. And I like to use jazz as an example of this. I personally don’t enjoy jazz – don’t hate me. But jazz breaks all the rules. And that’s what makes it exciting for a lot of people is that it doesn’t have form, it doesn’t have shape. It’s just pure raw emotion. That’s what jazz is: jazz is a feeling jazz is a vibe.
K:
So I enjoy some jaz, but not all jazz. So I shouldn’t say I don’t like jazz, I don’t like all jazz. And I feel like that’s the same with – with writing. And that’s the same with awards, the people who make up the awards board, what I’m hoping is to have different views than my own. So if there’s a story that I wouldn’t long list or shortlist, that there will be someone else that says, okay, this is my long list. And then I give my long list and the five of us get together and we can – okay, this is our long list. And then from our long list, we say, okay, let’s reread these long listed stories. And let’s look at what is going to be the criteria for making the shortlist. And I think everyone’s going to have their own criteria for how they put a story on or off the shortlist and how passionate they are – it’s going to be a group discussion. So there’s no – I can’t give you any rules for what will get your story long listed or shortlisted, except for what’s on my side of the street, and I’m only one vote. I’m one, one of five. And the reason I’m one to five is so that my own personal bias doesn’t prevent me from seeing the value and merit of a story that I don’t connect with. And to ensure that there’s diversity in award winners. And I believe that every person has bias whether it be implicit or explicit. So implicit bias are the biases that we don’t know that we have. And bias is just another word for preference. And I have explicit preferences. And for me, it’s, do you meet my expectations? And I have another potential board member that they’re like, don’t you dare meet my expectations, surprise me. And I have another board member that I know is going to be a board member because they work for Cinnabar Moth Publishing, and I’m making time on their schedule for it. And they’re like, I don’t know. That’s the whole thing. I don’t know if I like it. And I was pressing him a little bit more like what does that mean, if you like it? Like just that if I like it. And like what kind of stories do you like? Interesting stories. What makes the story interesting? One I like.
K:
My point in sharing that is that there’s really no system that will guarantee that you win the award. My thing is, write stories, put them out there, if you have a story you love, and you just absolutely can’t find someplace to publish it, put it on Medium, put it on a blog, it can be your own blog, put it on your website, as long as it’s somewhere that the public can consume it, it’s eligible. And the same thing goes with poetry: if you can’t find someplace to, to get it traditionally published in a magazine or in a chap book, put it on Medium, put it on a blog, put it on your blog, put it on your website. It just has to be open for public consumption. And I know that it’s repetitive. I know I just said that twice. But I really want to bring it home that it’s not a trick, we’re not trying to trick you. And you all will get to see what happens for award winners. Because the first two award winners were handpicked by me. And you’ll get to see their experience. And you’ll get to see their experience in 2022. Because we already have an author in residence for 2021. And I like to do things really far in advance. So in April of 2022, we will be announcing the 2021 winners. And then the winner of the short story will have until the end of September to get me their short stories, and the winner of the poetry award will have until the end of December to get me their poems. And then, while you’re thinking about whether or not to submit to this free, free award.
K:
That’s me trying to get you to submit. Submit. I want lots of submissions. We want a long list, we want to shortlist. We’re going to publish who makes a long list, we’re going to publish who makes the shortlist. And that’s name recognition and we’re going to publish who wins. So I think there’s something to be said for people for making a long list of an award and I think there’s something to be said for making the shortlist. I think there’s something to be said for winning. So I hope that y’all, write, write, write. Write a lot because anything published in the year of 2022 from January 1 of 2022 to December 31 of 2022 is eligible for entry. And we’ll be taking entries for that in January and February of 2023. And I’ll remind y’all, so you don’t have to remember. And yeah, happy writing, get to writing. And I’m so excited about this award, and I’m so excited to announce our award winners in April. And thank you so much for listening to this week’s Writers Triangle. I want to thank all of our beautiful Cinnabar Moths or any kind of Moth you want to be. And like I say every week you can even be a butterfly but I’m not Mariah Carey, so I’m not trying to bite that rhyme. And I will talk to you in two weeks. Bye.