After five long months of suspense and careful deliberation, Flatmancrooked is proud to announce the winners of the Flatmancrooked Prize For Excellent Writing Done During a Period of Great Fiscal Renewal. Our esteemed judge, Aimee Bender, hand picked the top three stories. The order is as follows:

Grand Prize:

“Un-Love Letters” by Kevin Walsh

Runner-Up:

“Cleave” by J. David Stevens

Second Runner-Up:

“Boundaries” by N.A. Jong

All three stories, in addition to the subsequent eight top contest entries, will appear in Flatmancrooked’s third print anthology. And for the next two weeks, the second and third runners-up will be featured on the website. We’d like to express our sincerest gratitude to everyone who entered; the contest was a tremendous success, and we’ve discovered some great literature because of it. We look forward to sharing it with you.

Never has the Flatmancrooked editorial staff been so overwhelmed with amazing work. Selecting the top ten entries was insanely difficult, but the judging is out of our hands, now: we’ve sent the final stories to Aimee Bender for judging. Aimee will read the stories. In mid-October we will announce who she’s selected as the recipient of the Flatmancrooked Prize (for Excellent Writing Done During a Period of Great Fiscal Renewal), as well as the 1st and 2nd runners-up. All ten of these authors will be featured in the next print anthology, due out in early November. Here’s the list in alphabetical order:

Sean Adams

John Christy

Daniel Grandbois

N.A. Jong

Charlene Kwon

Sara Levine

Josh Peterson

J. David Stevens

Kevin Walsh

Joel Willans

Flatmancrooked is pleased to present the top fifteen authors from the Flatmancrooked Prize For Excellent Writing Done During a Period of Great Fiscal Renewal. The contest opened on May 15th and closed on August 15th and was a tremendous success! The following fifteen names represent the editors’ picks, and all of their stories will be featured on the website over the next year. Next week, we’ll announce the top ten that we’ve sent to the inimitable Aimee Bender for judging. She will announce the winner (and recipient of 1,000, real, American dollars) on October 15th. We want to extend our gratitude and appreciation to everyone who entered; the pool of talent was remarkable, the decision-making difficult. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements on forthcoming Flatmancrooked writing contests. We’ve got a great one brewing.

And now, without further ado, our top fifteen, in alphabetical order:

Sean Adams

Liz Anderson

John Christy

Benjamin Henry DeVries

Daniel Grandbois

John Jodzio

N.A. Jong

Charlene Kwon

Sara Levine

Valerie O’Riordan

Josh Peterson

Tom Stacey

J. David Stevens

Kevin Walsh

Joel Willans

This morning, half the copies of Fly-Over State arrived at Emma Straub’s house. Just look at that darling book! She’s signing and hand-numbering all of them. Then she’ll send them to us, and we’ll send them out to shareholders. If you haven’t helped LAUNCH Emma, you have, like two weeks left. There are only 16 shares remaining of the original 200, so get on it!

Ever wonder how to get your work past the slush pile? Ever wish that editors were a little more accessible? Well, wish no more. Flatmancrooked introduces PITCH: Brooklyn. Please RSVP on the Facebook page.

Here’s the idea: Flatmancrooked wants to give authors the opportunity to submit and pitch their work in-person, face-to-face with real, live editors. Details are as follows:

The event will take place at:

BROOKLYN LIBRARY — Park Slope (in the auditorium):
431 6th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215-4006
(718) 832-1853

Date & Time: SATURDAY, SEPT. 26th. Sign-up begins at 11am. PITCH starts promptly at 11:30am.

This event allows 80 writers two minutes to PITCH their work for potential print publication. This is a first-come, first-serve event. Be there first to ensure your opportunity to sign-up and PITCH your story. NOTE: We are allowing a max of 30 writers to sign-up early, after the book release for Emma Straub’s Fly-Over State, occurring the night before at Bookcourt.

Criteria:

Short stories: Stories that are 8k words or less will be considered for print publication in one of Flatmancrooked’s anthologies. Be prepared to present a synopsis of the story and an explanation of why you think it would be a good fit for Flatmancrooked.

Novellas: Longer stories, ranging from 8-30k words will be considered for the New Novella imprint. Be prepared to present a synopsis of the story and an explanation of why you think it would be a good fit for Flatmancrooked, and how you would envision marketing it to its potential audience.

Novels/Book-Length Manuscripts: Work longer than 40k words will be considered for the main Flatmancrooked imprint. Again, be prepared to present a synopsis of the story and an explanation for why you think it would be a good fit for Flatmancrooked, and how you would envision marketing it to its potential audience.

Format:

For short stories and novellas, we would like the full manuscript, printed and stapled with a cover sheet including complete contact information. For novels/book-length manuscripts we’d like to see the first 30 pages-or the first chapter and additional chapters that best represent the work, not to exceed 30 pages.

Feedback:

At the close of the event, the editorial staff will announce which stories, based on the PITCHES heard, are being put under consideration for publication. The rest of the submissions will receive detailed feedback about both their pitch and their story. Again, this will happen at the close of the event, at roughly 1:30pm.

Note:

Please read and review Flatmancrooked’s submission guidelines and contractual standards so that you are familiar with our model.

Hope to see 80 great writers in Brooklyn!

A week ago we shot a commercial for Emma Straub’s book, Fly-Over State. Today we release it. Miles Kittredge both filmed and edited this little gem. We had a blast making it, and we hope you all have a blast watching it. Should it compel you to invest in Emma Straub’s career, go LAUNCH her!

On Sunday, the Flatmancrooked crew, with help from the cinematographer and editor, Miles Kittredge, shot a little commercial endorsing the “launch” of Emma Straub. We’ll release the film next week, but in order to get you all excited, we’ve leaked the following pictures. Enjoy and disseminate. And if you haven’t invested in Emma’s career, check out her LAUNCH page.

The first Flatmancrooked website went up almost two years ago, but it’s been during the last twelve months or so that the company has truly accelerated. In fact, it’s growing faster that we could’ve imagined. We’ve been getting a little nostalgic recently for those carefree days-when we didn’t have to work very hard-so we thought we’d put together a little retrospective. Click on any of the thumbnails below to see the expanded version of some dope pictures taken during our semi-meteoric rise (as if meteors rose).

The making of First Winter

UNSAFE: A reading featuring Joe Wenderoth and Christopher “Whitey” Erickson

The making of Flatmancrooked’s Anthology of Great New Writing Done During an Economic Depression

Flatmancrooked in Los Angeles

Friends, Americans, Enemies, Farmers, Literati, Republicans, Emperors, and Others, this is the new site! Nathan “Coyote” Smith (left) did the coding. Katie Wilson (right) did the design. Notice the new top and side bars. You’ll see that there are some new sections. We’ll continue to publish wonderful, brand new fiction in the Features section. If you want to read our signature brand of film and book criticism, visit High Horse. Finally, if you’d like to hear about the newest innovations in 21st Century publishing, head over to Industry.

From now on, we’ll devote this blog to site updates, event write-ups, and anything else new and rad going on around town. Tell your friends that the most dedicated team of publishing revisionists in America are live with a new online platform. Get ready!

The “Ideal Fiction” series continues with three of Flatmancrooked’s authors. Read Part I here.

Theodore Wheeler, author of “Impatiens:”

Ten Stories That Theodore Wheeler Loves and He Doesn’t Care If Everybody in the World Knows About It

A few months ago I heard a radio interview with Gore Vidal in which he bemoaned certain book reviewers who fixate on works they dislike greatly, since it’s his belief that the purpose of criticism is to give greater exposure to the literature that one loves. With this in mind (Thanks, Gore Vidal!) I tried to narrow my focus to more recent stories that really move me—to those works which shape how I view contemporary literature, more or less. Writers such as Chekhov, Hemingway, Carver, Barthelme, Maupassant, Paley, and Faulkner should remain essential for any anthology worth its salt. Theirs are the stories we will always hold on to, I hope, because they open us to the frightening possibilities of life. The ten stories on my list moved me in a way similar to the canonical writers mentioned above; they are ten stories from contemporary literature which I both love and am frightened by, because of their stark depictions of darkness and beauty, and their ability to make me feel the world. Not only that, it’s a kind of love that I want to share with other readers.

1. “My Parents’ Bedroom” by Uwem Akpan
2. “Alice” by Tucker Capps
3. “Safety Man” by Dan Chaon
4. “Fiesta, 1980” by Junot Díaz
5. “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” by Denis Johnson
6. “Future Emergencies” by Nicole Krauss
7. “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” by Nam Le
8. “Pilgrims” by Julie Orringer
9. “Uncle” by Suzanne Rivecca
10. “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” by George Saunders

Matthew Salesses, author of “How to be a Cannibal” and “Cannibals on a Yacht”; Editor in Chief of Redivider:

Stories for Writers

These stories taught me a lot. I was tempted to go with even more Amy Hempel-I couldn’t resist including at least these two stories, my favorites. The Tim O’Brien pieces go together in a similar way to Hempel’s “The Harvest,” the second breaking down our expectations constructed in the first. Some (maybe all) of these stories are better read within their collections—but what can you do, leave out representation from Jesus’ Son? Impossible. The anthology, for me, represents an interest in structure and voice, and the ambition to fit novels into stories.

1. “Wants” by Grace Paley Grace
2. “Royal Beatings” by Alice Munro
3. “Sea Oak” by George Saunders
4. “So Much Water, So Close to Home” by Raymond Carver
5. “Emergency” by Denis Johnson
6. “The Harvest” by Amy Hempel
7. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway
8. “The Burning House” by Ann Beattie
9. “Water Liars” by Barry Hannah
10. “A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri
11. “The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick
12. “Silence” by Tadeusz Borowski
13. “Speaking of Courage” by Tim O’Brien
14. “Notes” by Tim O’Brien
15. “Tumble Home” by Amy Hempel

Timothy Braun, author of “Men With Guns:”

Existential Psychology, Metaphysical Momentum, and an Ontological Kind of Thing

My ideal anthology places an emphasis on character, being, and psychology. With almost all of the stories I’ve selected for this collection, setting and “world” is arbitrary (even in John Updike’s “The City”), and give way to the distinctiveness and nuances of the characters and the continuation of their lives. With “The Woman Who Came at Six O’clock,” the audience never discovers the name of the title character, nor do we need to once we learn what she does from day to day. On “Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning,” the story circulates around the wants and needs of a poignant narrator dripping with longing. In Kurt Vonnegut’s “Who Am I This Time?,” love blooms not from who the characters are, but who they aren’t. All of these stories have an epic intimacy and a point in which the characters seek escape from the circumstances of their lives, trying to dodge emotional booby traps, looking for a truth they can call their own.

1. “The Woman Who Came at Six O’clock” by Gabriel García Márquez
2. “Nostalgia” by Bharati Mukherjee
3. “Newlywed” by Banana Yoshimoto
4. “The City” by John Updike
5. “How To Date a Brown Girl” by Junot Díaz
6. “Blue Boy” by Kevin Canty
7. “Rocketfire Red” by Thom Jones
8. “Days of Blackouts” by Sam Shepard
9. “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning” by Haruki Murakami
10. “Who Am I This Time?” by Kurt Vonnegut

By Deena Drewis