I love Carve Magazine. I have felt this way since stumbling across it online in the heady days of 2008 back when I was knee deep in an Open University Creative Writing course with less than a handful of stories written, none of them published, and this blog did not exist. I read Carve online and immediately wanted to be published on their website.

Fast forward to today and I am waist deep in a MA in Creative Writing, nearly neck deep into a first draft of my first novel, and last night I received the brilliant news that my story Storm in a Teacup has won an Esoteric Award in Carve Magazine alongside stories from two other authors. The prize-winning stories will feature in the Spring 2013 edition of the magazine, which will not only be available online but in a full featured print edition that is the first issue of Carve to be distributed nationally across the U.S.

You can check out the link for the full details but the main prize winning announcement reads thusly:

Prizewinners

“Higher Ground” by Karen Celestan, New Orleans, LA

“The Possibility of Fire” by Jessica Barksdale, Oakland, CA

“Storm in a Teacup” by Dan Powell, United Kingdom.

Honorable Mentions:

“Before the Earth Shook” by Victoria Lange, Cambridge, MA

“A Chance to Get Involved” by Jeff Moscaritolo, Prior Lake, MN.

Congratulations to my fellow winners, Karen, Jessica, Victoria and Jeff. Can’t wait to read your stories.

Carve Magazine Print Edition – a thing of beauty.

As regular readers will know, I’m a big fan of the Carve print edition, with its extra features and interviews in which authors discuss their stories in depth and their work in general. It is a blast to think that this weekend I will be interviewed by the folk at Carve for the print edition companion piece to my story.Another great feature of the print edition is the inspired Reject! column where the editors invite an author of a story previously rejected by Carve (that subsequently went on to secure publication elsewhere) to come back and talk about their story and the rejection/redrafting process.

Winning this award and being included in the online and print editions of Carve feels like a real achievement, the attainment of a long held goal. To do it with a prize-winning story makes it even more special. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of the Spring 2013 issue.