TSR Announces Frank McCourt Memoir Prize

The Southampton Review (TSR) has announced the creation of a new Frank McCourt Memoir Prize for their Summer/Fall 2016 issue of TSR, the literary and fine art journal of the MFA in Creative Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton.

First prize will be $1,000 and second prize will be $500—both winners will be published in the Summer/Fall edition of TSR, traditionally launched during the final weekend of the annual Southampton Writers Conference in July.

Frank McCourt, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Angela’s Ashes, taught workshops at the Southampton Writers Conference beginning in 2002, when the writing program at the campus was still under the auspices of Long Island University. He continued to serve on the Writers Conference faculty through the transition to Stony Brook University in 2006 and until the summer of 2008.

He died, of melanoma, in July of 2009, in the same month that TSR Volume III, No. 2 was published as a tribute to him.

Lou Ann Walker, editor-in-chief of TSR: The Southampton Review, said last month that the new memoir prize was named for McCourt both to honor his memory and achievements and to encourage writers submitting memoir pieces to remember the value of lacing a sense of humor into even the gravest circumstances.

On the submissions page of The Southampton Review website, thesouthamptonreview.com, where details and submission guidelines can be found, the editors note that they are looking for “writing that is intimate, illuminating, moving, tragicomic or just plain comic.” Submissions for the McCourt Prize must not exceed 4,500 words, and will be accepted until March 15, 2016. Regular fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cartoon and fine art submissions for TSR will be open until April 1.

The 2016 Winter/Spring edition of TSR: The Southampton Review (Volume X, No. 1) is available at select bookstores, in circulation at local libraries, and from the campus through the TSR website. Included in this edition are tributes to two highly regarded East End authors with connections to the writing program at the campus who died in 2015: James Salter and E.L. Doctorow.

For more info about TSR: The Southampton Review or the new Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, email editors@thesouthamptonreview.com or visit thesouthamptonreview.com.