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BWC Chapter One

Chapter One Fiction Competition and Reading Series

The Chapter One Fiction Competition and Reading Series is an annual competition and reading series, open to residents of New York City, that provides opportunities for emerging novelists to share their work with an audience, while emphasizing the importance of a strong first chapter.

Chapter One Guidelines and Requirements

The Bronx Writers' Center is seeking first chapters from unpublished novels and works-in-progress, written by authors in the five boroughs of New York City. No more than five selections will be made, and those writers whose chapter one has been chosen will receive a $1,000 honorarium and be invited to give a reading. 2007 Chapter One winners are not eligible to apply in 2008.

Click here for 2008 Guidelines and Application.

Deadline: Entries should be mailed and postmarked by midnight, Wednesday, October 1, 2008, or hand-delivered no later 4:00pm that same day at BCA's main office at 1738 Hone Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461.

2008 Chapter One Winners
 


Mai Hoang
was born in Vietnam and raised in northern California. After graduating from the University of California, Davis, she became a newspaper reporter. Since 2001, she has lived in New York City, working as an editor at magazines such as Ms. and World Press Review. She also edits the Asian-American online journal called TripmasterMonkey.com. She is working on a Vietnam War novel entitled The Testimony of Mr. Dao (its first chapter was a winning entry in this competition).




Marie Holmes
was raised in a bunch of places, but mostly in Portland, Oregon. She has been living in New York for a while now, and earned an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her stories have appeared in the Coe Review, Blithe House Quarterly and The Los Angeles Review (forthcoming.) She received the 2006 Gival Press Short Story Award. She currently lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her partner and pays her half of the rent by teaching Spanish to New York City high school students.


Darleen Lev spent three years teaching English in South Korea, an experience that helped her to develop an outsider’s view of American culture. Teaching writing to international students at Parsons the New School for Design has kept this perspective close, inspiring aspects of her novel-in-progress, The White Girl, the first chapter of which was selected for “Chapter One”. Bad Wind, Good Wind, a short story set in Korea and published in Chelsea was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has been awarded residencies at Yaddo and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In addition to teaching and working to complete The White Girl, Lev works as an interior decorator.


Suzan Sherman's fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review, American Short Fiction, BOMB, and the anthology Lost Tribe: Jewish Writers on the Edge (HarperCollins), among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Observer, BOOKFORUM, BOMB, and The Forward. She has been awarded grants for her fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation, and fiction fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and Ledig House, among others. She is completing her first novel, Pearl O'Shea.


Jessica Sticklor is a recent graduate of The New School with a degree concentrating in creative writing. She has been an editor for The Muse Apprenticeship Guild, The Olive Tree Review and The Castalia Project online zine, which was her brief attempt at founding a literary journal. After college she interned at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency and is currently an MFA student at City College in New York. She has been previously published in The Northwest Herald, The Riverwalk Review, The Mini-Mag, Release, City Writers, Children, Churches and Daddies, Birmingham Words, Open Wide and The Hawai'i Pacific Review. A recent story of hers was a finalist at the Summer Literary Seminars Kenya Contest and she has been asked to perform at Earshot, a prestigious poetry reading series out of Brooklyn, New York.


For more information, call Lydia Clark of the Bronx Writers’ Center at 718-931-9500 x35 or e-mail Lydia Clark.

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