Nominations Are Now Open for 2021 Best of the Net Anthology

Nominations are now open for Best of the Net, an awards-based anthology designed to grant a platform to a diverse and growing collection of writers and publishers who are building an online literary landscape that seeks to break free of traditional publishing.

In addition to poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, for the first time, we will also be accepting art nominations!

Nominations must have originally been published online between July 1st, 2020, and June 30th, 2021. See guidelines for more details on eligibility. Submissions must be received between July 1st and September 30th, 2021.

See the full submission guidelines here.

To submit, please use the following forms:

Poetry submission form
Fiction submission form
Nonfiction submission form
Art submission form

This year’s judges are Mai Der Vang (poetry), Amber Sparks (fiction), Krys Malcolm Belc (nonfiction), and Rhonda Lott (art).

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Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry, and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she served as a Visiting Writer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Tin House, and The American Poetry Review, among other journals and anthologies. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Mai Der also co-edited How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology with the Hmong American Writers’ Circle. A Kundiman fellow, Mai Der has completed residencies at Civitella Ranieri and Hedgebrook. Born and raised in Fresno, California, she earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

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Amber Sparks is the author of four collections of short fiction, including And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges and The Unfinished World, and her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, The Cut, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

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Krys Malcolm Belc is the author of the memoir The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Counterpoint) and the flash nonfiction chapbook In Transit (The Cupboard Pamphlet.) His work has been featured in Granta, Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (Rose Metal Press), Wigleaf Top 50, and Best of the Net 2018. Krys lives in Philadelphia with his partner and their three young children and works as an educator in a pediatric hospital.

White woman with dark hair and glasses smiling slightly at camera, wearing an off-the-shoulder navy blouse and large necklace with silver leaf

Rhonda Lott is an artist, code developer, and writer based in Knoxville, Tennessee. As a lifelong lover of the arts and sciences, she holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Springfield and a doctorate in creative writing from Texas Tech University. Her poetry has appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Whiskey Island Magazine, among others. She has contributed cover art to Best of the Net for twelve years.

2019 Best of the Net Anthology Released

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the release of the 2019 edition of Best of the Net. This year’s anthology includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in thirty-two different journals and features work by Jane Wong, K Ming Cheng, Leila Chatti, Gabriela Garcia, Sarah Eliza Johnson, and many more.

This year’s judges were Eloisa Amezcua, Megan Giddings, and Hanif Abdurraqib

Eloisa Amezcua is from Arizona. Her debut collection, From the Inside Quietly, is the inaugural winner of the Shelterbelt Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón. A MacDowell fellow, she is the author of three chapbooks and founder/editor-in-chief of The Shallow Ends: A Journal of Poetry. Her poems and translations are published in New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and others. Eloisa lives in Columbus, OH and is the founder of Costura Creative.

Megan Giddings is a fiction editor at The Offing and a features editor at The Rumpus. She’s been included in the 2014 and 2018 Best of the Net anthologies. Her short stories are forthcoming or have been recently published in Catapult, Gulf Coast, and The Iowa Review. Megan’s debut novel, Lakewood, will be published by Amistad in 2020. More about her can be found at megangiddings.com.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a writer from the east side of Columbus, Ohio.

Read the latest edition of this annual anthology, today.

A 501(c)(3) non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

Nominations Open for 2018 Best of the Net Anthology

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Nominations are now open for the annual Best of the Net anthology from Sundress Publications. This anthology promotes the diverse and growing collection of voices who are publishing their work online and serves to bring greater respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium.

Nominations must have originally appeared online, and must have been first published or appeared on the web between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.

Nominations must come from the editor of the publication (journal, chapbook, online press, etc.), or, if the work is self-published, it must be sent by the author. For journals and presses, each entry may include up to six poems, two stories, and two works of creative nonfiction for consideration. For individuals sending self-published work, please send no more than two pieces regardless of genre.

Please include both the URL of the poem, story, or essay as well as a full text version in a Word or RTF document. Nominations must also include the author’s name and email address as well as the name, contact info, and URL of the journal.

Submissions must be sent via email to bestofthenet@sundresspublications.com between July 1st and September 30th, 2018.

See the full submission guidelines here: http://www.sundresspublications.com/bestof/submit.htm

Nominations Open for 2017 Best of the Net Anthology

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Nominations are now open for the annual Best of the Net anthology from Sundress Publications. This anthology promotes the diverse and growing collection of voices who are publishing their work online and serves to bring greater respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium.

Nominations must have originally appeared online, and must have been first published or appeared on the web between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017.

Nominations must come from the editor of the publication (journal, chapbook, online press, etc), or, if the work is self-published, it must be sent by the author. For journals and presses, each entry may include up to six poems, two stories, and two works of creative nonfiction for consideration. For individuals sending self-published work, please send no more than two pieces regardless of genre.

Please include both the URL of the poem, story, or essay as well as a full text version in a Word or RTF document. Nominations must also include the author’s name and email address as well as the name, contact info, and URL of the journal.

Submissions must be sent via email to bestofthenet@sundresspublications.com between July 1st and September 30th, 2017.

See the full submission guidelines here: http://www.sundresspublications.com/bestof/submit.htm

 

2015 Best of the Net Anthology Released

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Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the release of the 10th anniversary edition of the Best of the Net Anthology! This year’s anthology includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in 27 different journals and features work by Claudia Emerson, Chen Chen, Jennifer Givhan, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Sandra Meek, Eric Tran, Harmony Neal, Jesse Goolsby, Kimi Traube, and many more!

This year’s judges included Bruce Bond, Brian Oliu, and Kate Schmitt.

Bruce Bond is the author of fourteen books including five forthcoming: Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (University of Michigan Press), For the Lost Cathedral (LSU Press), Black Anthem (Tampa Review Prize, University of Tampa Press), Sacrum (Four Way Books), and The Other Sky (Etruscan Press). Presently he is Regents Professor at University of North Texas.

Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently teaches at the University of Alabama. He is the author of three full-length collections, So You Know It’s Me (Tiny Hardcore Press, 2011), a series of Craigslist Missed Connections, Leave Luck to Heaven (Uncanny Valley Press, 2014), an ode to 8-bit video games, & Enter Your Initials For Record Keeping (Cobalt Press, 2015). essays on NBA Jam. i/o (Civil Coping Mechanisms), a memoir in the form of a computer virus, is forthcoming in 2015. His works in progress deal with professional wrestling and long distance running (not at once).

Kate Schmitt‘s Singing Bones won the 2013 Zone 3 Press Creative Nonfiction Book Award. A writer and visual artist, Kate Schmitt has an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program. Her work has been published in a number of anthologies, including Earth Shattering Poems (Holt, 1998), Light Gathering Poems (Holt, 2000), I Just Hope It’s Lethal (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), and The Weight of Addition (Mutabilis Press, 2007), as well as the literary journals Paradigm, Birmingham Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Louisiana Literature. She was a nonfiction editor of Gulf Coast and served on the journal’s Board of Directors in 2008-2009. She has also edited and written for the companion website to a pilot television series created by Shelley Duvall, a wind energy company, and most recently for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her courses include nonfiction and poetry workshops, 20th-century literature, young adult literature, and Chinese literature in translation.

You can read the newest edition of the anthology online.

Sundress Publications Presents a Night of Three Celebratory Off-Site Readings

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Sundress Publications is pleased to present three readings celebrating the launch of our Political Punch anthology, the tenth anniversary of Best of the Net, and Sundress’s Sweet Sixteen.

This event will take place on Thursday, March 31, at 7pm and will be held at The Lexington Bar located at 129 E 3rd St, Los Angeles, California 90013.

From 7PM-8PM, we will launch our new poetry anthology, Political Punch: The Politics of Identity, with readings by Timothy Liu, Cam Awkward-Rich, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Lee Ann Roripaugh, and Chen Chen.

At 8PM, we will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Best of the Net Anthology with readings by previous contributors and judges, including Traci Brimhall, Matt Hart, Nicole Walker, Alix Olin, Emily Jungmin Yoon, Sarah Einstein, and more!

In our final hour, we will honor Sundress’s Sweet 16 with readings by our authors, including Fox Frazier-Foley, Amorak Huey, Letitia Trent, Jill Khoury, Saba Syed Razvi, Jessica Rae Bergamino, and M. Mack.

Sundress Publications is a (mostly) woman-run, woman-friendly non-profit publication group founded in 2000 that hosts a variety of online journals and publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats. We also publish the annual Best of the Net Anthology, celebrating the best work published online.

RSVP today!

 

2014 Best of the Net Anthology Released

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Knoxville, TN—Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the release of the 2014 edition of the Best of the Net Anthology!  This year’s anthology includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in 29 different journals and features work by G.C. Waldrop, Sally Wen Mao, Nate Marshall, Michelle Y. Burke, Nicole Walker, Johanna Stoberock, and many more!

This year’s judges included Kathy Fagan, Lily Hoang, and Michael Martone.

Kathy Fagan’s fifth collection of poems, Sycamore, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2016. Winner of the National Poetry Series and Vassar Miller prizes, she has received grants from the NEA, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council, and her work has appeared in venues such as FIELD, Narrative, Ninth Letter, The Paris Review, and Poetry. Fagan teaches in the MFA Program at Ohio State, where she also serves as Series Editor of the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Poetry Prize.

Lily Hoang is the author of four books, including Changing, recipient of a PEN Open Books Award. With Blake Butler, she edited 30 Under 30, and with Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she is editing the forthcoming anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on the Avant-Garde and Accessibility. She teaches in the MFA program at New Mexico State University, where she is Associate Department Head, and she serves as Prose Editor for Puerto del Sol.

Michael Martone’s most recent book of essays is Racing in PlaceThe Flatness and Other Landscapes was the winner of the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize. He has authored a dozen books of short fiction and edited several collections short prose including The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. He currently teaches at the University of Alabama and has taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University, Syracuse University, and Warren Wilson College.

You can read the newest edition of the anthology online at
http://www.sundresspublications.com/bestof/.

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Submissions Now Open for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology!

Sundress Publications is now open for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology nominations. This project continues to promote the diverse and growing collection of voices who are publishing their work online.

The internet continues to be a rapidly evolving medium for the distribution of new and innovative literature, and the Best of the Net Anthology aims to nurture the relationship between writers and the web. In our first seven years of existence, the anthology has published distinguished writers such as Claudia Emerson, B.H. Fairchild, Ron Carlson, Dorianne Laux, and Jill McCorkle alongside numerous new and emerging writers from around the world. This year’s judges are Kathy Fagan, Lily Hoang, and Michael Martone.

Kathy Fagan‘s fifth collection of poems, Sycamore, will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2016. Winner of the National Poetry Series and Vassar Miller prizes, she has received grants from the NEA, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council, and her work has appeared in venues such as FIELD, Narrative, Ninth Letter, The Paris Review, and Poetry. Fagan teaches in the MFA Program at Ohio State, where she also serves as Series Editor of the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Poetry Prize.

Lily Hoang is the author of four books, including Changing, recipient of a PEN Open Books Award. With Blake Butler, she edited 30 Under 30, and with Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she is editing the forthcoming anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on the Avant-Garde and Accessibility. She teaches in the MFA program at New Mexico State University, where she is Associate Department Head, and she serves as Prose Editor for Puerto del Sol.

Michael Martone‘s most recent book of essays is Racing in PlaceThe Flatness and Other Landscapes was the winner of the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize. He has authored a dozen books of short fiction and edited several collections short prose including The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. He currently teaches at the University of Alabama and has taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University, Syracuse University, and Warren Wilson College.

Nominations for the 2014 edition must be sent to bestofthenet@sundresspublications.com between July 1st and September 30th, 2014. Further submission guidelines can be found at:

 http://www.sundresspublications.com/bestof/

 

2012 Best of the Net Anthology Released

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the release of the 2012 edition of the Best of the Net anthology! This year’s anthology includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in twenty-four different journals and features work by Eduardo C. Corral, Matt Hart, Saeed Jones, Alix Ohlin, Ocean Vuong, Marcus Wicker, Wendy Xu, and many more!

This year’s judges included poet Marilyn Kallet, fiction-writer John McManus, and memoirist & novelist, Lee Martin.

Marilyn Kallet is the author of 15 books, including Packing Light: New and Selected Poems (Black Widow Press, 2009). Her next book of poems, The Love That Moves Me, was published early in 2013. She has translated Paul Eluard’s Last Love Poems and Surrealist Benjamin PŽret’s The Big Game. In 2005, Kallet was inducted into the East Tennessee Literary Hall of Fame in Poetry. She has won the Tennessee Arts Commission Literary Fellowship in Poetry, and has served as a literary arts advisor to the TAC. Dr. Kallet is Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee, where she is also Professor of English. She also teaches poetry workshops for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in Auvillar, France.

John McManus is the author of the novel Bitter Milk (2005) and the short story collections Born on a Train (2003) and Stop Breakin Down (2000), all published by Picador USA. In 2000 he became the youngest-ever winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award following the publication of Stop Breakin Down. His fiction and non-fiction have also appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Oxford American, The Harvard Review, StorySouth, Columbia, Paraphilia, and Night Train, as well as the fiction anthologies Surreal South ’09, Surreal South ’11, and Degrees of Elevation. His writing fellowships and awards include the New Writing Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the James A. Michener fellowship at the University of Texas, where he earned his MFA in 2004. McManus is a professor of creative writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and he also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Goddard College in Vermont. He is contributing editor for Fiddleblack, a literary journal dedicated to creative writing with a strong sense of place.

Lee Martin is the author of the novels, The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; and Break the Skin. He has also published three memoirs, From Our House, Turning Bones and Such a Life. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. He is the co-editor of Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.

You can read the newest edition of the anthology online at http://www.sundresspublications.com/bestof.