When I was in grad school, one of the things that most struck me was the way other writers, (especially the other grad students), talked about their achievements. All of them, it seemed, had a neatly canned bio listing off the magazines where they’d been published, academic positions they’d held, and, of course, awards they’d won.
I found the formulaic aspects of these bios fascinating. Their components were more or less interchangeable, their lengths (always a short paragraph) never seemed to vary, and most noticeably, I never seemed to recognize most of the journal and award names. How was I to know, I wondered, whether a literary award or journal I hadn’t heard of was significant, or just some hot air to make the writer look like hot shit?
When I started gathering ideas for MFA Thesis Novel, I knew right away that I wanted all of the pretentious writer characters to have their own bios—all of which would be filled with imaginary magazines, literary awards, and academic positions that would disorient readers the same way I’d been disoriented in the academic writing world. Here’s a snapshot from the first page:
Kendall Warren is a recipient of the Reginald R. Watcomb Fellowship for Short Story Writers, the Gregory P. Alderman Writer’s Award, and most recently the Hasenpfeffer-Schweppman-Hildridge Book Prize for his short story collection, Where the Wind Becomes You, due to be released in the spring. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal of Midwestern Literature, The Black Sycamore Review, The New North American Review, White Frost, and The Great Plains Literary Review, among others. He has twice been nominated for a Riverboat Prize, and his short story “Time of Dejection” was the 2016 winner of the Sterling Prize for Fiction. He holds an MFA in creative writing and is currently pursuing his PhD.
Kendall is the main antagonist in MFA Thesis Novel—he’s arrogant, belittling, and narrowminded in his quest to pursue academic glory at the expense of others. He also knows the nature of the academic game and how to set himself up for success in academia—and his bio shows that. When set alongside the main character’s bio, readers can immediately identify Kendall as the more impressive, polished, and (on the surface, at least), successful writer.
However, all of the literary journals and awards in Kendall’s bio (like all of the other literary journals and awards in MFA Thesis Novel) are imaginary (though I borrowed the Hasenpfeffer-Schweppman-Hildridge Book Prize from my earlier short story “Rejection”). One of them, though, the Riverboat Prize, is a dig at something very specific: The Pushcart Prize.
The real-life Pushcart Prize, though certainly not the most prestigious literary award out there, has long been the most widespread. Most (if not any) small publisher or journal can nominate short works for a Pushcart Prize, and if selected by the committee, the story will appear in an anthology published each year by Pushcart Press. It’s been around since 1976, and you can read more about it here.
As a younger writer who often saw “_________ has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize” as part of other writers’ bios, it took me a while to figure out what the Pushcart Prize actually was—all I really knew was that a lot of other writers were bragging about having been nominated for it, though no one ever seemed to win one.
That’s partly because any eligible small press or journal can nominate up to six writers each year for a Pushcart Prize. And, by this writer’s estimate, that comes out to more than 10,800 nominations each year (and that was in 2011!).
So while being nominated for a Pushcart Prize is certainly an achievement in the sense that a publisher chose your work to nominate above the work of others they’ve published (assuming, of course that the publisher published more than six writers that year), it’s not a huge achievement in the sense that it’s groundbreaking, momentous, or noteworthy, as this other writer will concur.
That said, I’ll add that I think it’s important for emerging and mid-level writers (i.e., those who have a few stories published and maybe a book or two) to have awards, achievements, and goals that fall within their more reasonable reach. The big-time writers who have bigger platforms, more prestige, and a boatload of contacts have higher-tier awards they’re better suited to compete for, but those of us who haven’t quite made it there yet need things to strive for, get nominated for, and ultimately put on our resumes to keep us moving forward too.
I don’t think there’s any special distinction to being nominated for a Pushcart Prize. That said, it’s still pretty cool to get that nod from your publisher, and nice to have as a little distinction and hype. In the end, though, there are far more important things in the writing world to focus on—one of them, being, you know, the writing itself and how much readers enjoy it.
With All of That Said…
Earlier this month I got some great news of my own: the editors at Vine Leaves Press nominated Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers for a Pushcarft Prize this year. More specifically, they nominated Chapter 13, “Riddles in the Late Afternoon,” one of my personal favorite chapters, and the one where Carcrash, Glimrick, and company have to face off against the larpers in a game of riddles that parodies the riddles scene with Gollum and Bilbo in The Hobbit. It was a scene I was excited to write from the very beginning, and one I spent a lot of time fine-tuning until the end—particularly the moments where Glimrick succumbs to the emotional tumult of the Onslaught and has to take refuge in the forest.
I’ll also give a quick shout-out to the other Vine Leaves authors who were nominated: Elaina Battista-Parsons (whose memoir Chomp Press Pull finely captures intricate moments from the ’80s and ’90s), David Hicks (whose novel The Gospel According to Danny is an absolute whirlwind about what it means to be successful and live a happy life), Jocelyn Jane Cox, Jill Amber Chaffin, and Nicole Zelniker (whose books I haven’t read, so I’m sorry I can’t say anything nice about them!). You can view the full Vine Leaves Press nominations list here.
In any case, congrats to everybody, thanks for reading, and I’ll be in touch. With the year wrapping up, I’m feeling really good about how 2025 has gone, and I’m looking forward to new adventures ahead.