Announcing our 2024 Genre Contest Winners:

April 23, 2024

We are excited to announce the winners and finalists of the 2024 CutBank Genre Contests, judged by Christine Byl, Toni Jensen, and Christina Olson. We appreciate every submission we get — thank you for the opportunity to read your work. The winning stories will be published in CutBank 101 this summer.

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Winner, Montana Prize in Nonfiction: “Kansas Tries to Say Goodbye” by Ruby Hansen Murray

Judged by Toni Jensen

Praise for “Kansas Tries to Say Goodbye” from Toni Jensen: “In “Kansas Tries to Say Goodbye,” Ruby Hansen Murray centers Osage language reclamation and community building in its rightful home on the South Plains. This essay shows the importance of language and land while also telling the compelling story of the language teachers, their histories and processes and deep commitment. The essay’s images and language carry the beauty and motion of the place and people with grace and love. It’s a beautiful portrait of connection.”

Ruby Hansen Murray is a columnist for the Osage News and a MacDowell and Hedgebrook fellow. Find her in Cascadia: A Field Guide, Ecotone, Pleiades, Moss, World Literature Today, the Massachusetts Review, The Rumpus, and Colorlines. She’s a citizen of the Osage and Cherokee Nations with West Indian roots living along the Columbia River.

Winner, Montana Prize in Fiction: “Joining the Pack” by E. Klein

Judged by Christine Byl

Praise for “Joining the Pack” from Christine Byl: “I have always been fascinated by the lives of dogs, and believe them to be kin to humans, yet it’s the rare story that can inhabit an animal’s consciousness without raising my hackles. E. Klein’s “Joining the Pack” is a rare story—inventive but unselfconscious, empathetic but not sentimental, and weird in the best possible way. With choices of diction, syntax and rhythm, the story creates its own logic, making for a nimble, imaginative romp that grabs a reader by the scruff and licks our sorrows into belonging.”

E. William Klein is from Ketchikan, Alaska, and worked in the commercial fishing industry there for 8 years. He received his MFA in Fiction from the Helen Zell Writer's program at the University of Michigan in 2016. His writing was awarded Honorable Mention in Bellevue Literary Review's 2024 Goldberg Prize for Fiction and has otherwise appeared in Carve and MQR.

Winner, Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry: “Sometimes when I am traveling alone I think of having a drink again in an airport bar” by Caitlin Scarano

Judged by Christina Olson

Praise for “Sometimes when I am traveling alone I think of having a drink again in an airport bar” by Christina Olson: "I love a good narrative poem, and "Sometimes when I am traveling alone I think of having a drink again in an airport bar" isn't a good narrative poem, it's a great one. We're in the airport with our speaker, wrestling with the dilemma to break seven years of sobriety, and then here comes the father, singing and cooing to his rotten liver. The airport is littered with men, their suitcase wheels making noise, and the father, not in the airport but riding on the shoulders of the speaker, and the estranged family, and the limitations of the body. Our speaker weaves all this trauma into a brief, shining story of abuse and heartbreak and--most essentially--survival. Sometimes we sit next to strangers at airport bars to hear stories; sober or not, you don't need to make friends over a $17 Heineken when you have this poem, which is better than any story a businessman connecting through DFW could tell you anyway.”

Caitlin Scarano is a writer based in Bellingham, Washington. Her second full length collection of poems,* The Necessity of Wildfire*, was a finalist for the WA State Book Award. Find her at caitlinscarano.com.

We are pleased to announce the judges of our 2022-23 poetry and nonfiction contests.

The submission window has been extended until February 7, 2023.

**Montana Prize in Fiction: Sterling HolyWhiteMountain**

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation. His work has appeared in *Montana Quarterly*, ESPN.com, *The Yellow Medicine Review*, *The Atlantic,* *The Paris Review*, and *The New Yorker*. He's currently a Jones lecturer at Stanford University, and is at work on a novel. He is an unrecognized citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.
Click here to submit to the 2022-23 Montana Prize in Fiction

**Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction Judge: Joni Tevis**

Joni Tevis is the author of two books of essays, most recently *The World Is On Fire*. Her work has been honored with two Pushcart Prizes and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She serves as the Bennette E. Geer Professor of English at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Click here to submit to the 2022-23 Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction.

**Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry Judge: JP Grasser**

A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, JP Grasser holds a PhD from the University of Utah, where he edited *Quarterly West*. His work was recognized with the inaugural Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize from the Academy of American Poets and with *Frontier Poetry*'s 2019 Open Prize, among other honors and awards. He currently serves as an associate editor for *32 Poems* and lives in Montana's Bitterroot Valley with his wife and their three horses.

Click here to submit to the 2022-23 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry.

CutBank Genre Contests

What We're Looking For

Thought-provoking, well-crafted fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Whether your writing is classic or genre-defying, send us your most captivating work.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions will be accepted only through the Submittable submission manager. Print or email submissions will not be considered. Please include a brief cover letter, biography, and contact information in the form provided. Please do not include identifying information in the body of your submission.
Submissions must be previously unpublished.
Simultaneous submissions are certainly welcome, provided that you withdraw your CutBank submission immediately via Submittable if it is accepted elsewhere.
Submissions should be double spaced, no more than five poems and/or 35 pages.
The $20 contest entry fee covers the reading of a single submission in a single genre. Please send only a single work of no greater than 35 pages or five poems. Writers are permitted to submit in multiple genres, but please submit only once per genre.
One winner in each genre will receive a $500 honorarium, publication in the print issue of CutBank 99, and one contributor’s copy of CutBank 99.

Submit to Poetry

Submit to Nonfiction

Submit to Fiction

Announcing our 2024 Genre Contest Winners:

Winner, Montana Prize in Nonfiction: “Kansas Tries to Say Goodbye” by Ruby Hansen Murray

Judged by Toni Jensen

2024 Nonfiction Contest Finalists:

Winner, Montana Prize in Fiction: “Joining the Pack” by E. Klein

Judged by Christine Byl

2024 Fiction Contest Finalists:

Winner, Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry: “Sometimes when I am traveling alone I think of having a drink again in an airport bar” by Caitlin Scarano

Judged by Christina Olson

2024 Patricia Goedicke Contest Runner-Up:

2024 Patricia Goedicke Contest Finalists:

Announcing our 2023-2024 Big Sky, Small Prose Winners:

**All three of these finalists will be published in issue 100 of CutBank, our winter/spring issue. Stay tuned in 2024 for details!**

We are pleased to announce the judges of our 2022-23 poetry and nonfiction contests.

CutBank Genre Contests