The theme for our August 1 - November 1, 2010 reading period is “Food.” We will accept submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that incorporate this theme, as well as non-themed submissions, via our online submission manager. As always, our theme is purposefully nebulous, providing flexibility for how writers might consider “food” in a surprising manner.

Since switching to electronic submissions, we’ve seen a spike of submissions here at cream city review, and we feel it’s made the competition–and the resulting quality of our issues–better than ever. So we were glad to see our impressions validated this week when the submission-tracking site duotrope.com promoted us to their list of 25 “Extremely Challenging Fiction Markets,” alongside such heavyweights as Harper’s, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker.

Yet despite being acknowledged as one of America’s most selective short fiction markets, we’re proud to publish almost entirely unsolicited, unagented work. It’s thanks to all of you that this achievement is possible: our many talented submitters, both beginning and established; our subscribers who enjoy the results; and, best of all, those wonderful individuals among you who do both.

The Spring 2008 issue of cream city review is now available at booksellers across the nation or, preferably, by direct subscription of single issue order. Click here to order. This 236-page volume has been completely redesigned with new fonts, page gutter iconography and features sixteen pages of original comics by European artists. As always, cream city review is perfect bound, printed on high-quality paper stock with full-color internal artwork and a durable cover.

The new issue features the work of local artist A. Bill Miller, poetry from Jennifer Perrine and Terita Heath-Wlaz, fiction by Andrew Mortazavi and Trudy Lewis, nonfiction by Derek Mong and an interview with Pam Houston. Check back here or subscribe to our feed for a regular stream of excerpts from this and other issues.

Annual Literary Prize Winners

Thanks to the hard work of our judges, Michael Martone, A. Manette Ansay and Josh Bell, we are please to announce the winners of our Annual Literary Prizes:

The winner of the A. David Schwartz Fiction Prize is Jeff P. Jones for “The Night the Winter Palace Was Taken”.

The winner of the David B. Saunders Prize for Creative Nonfiction is Anne Kornblatt for “The Writer of the Body”.

The winner of the Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize is Sara Wallace for “You”.

In addition to our generous sponsors, the Beau Boudreaux Foundation, Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops and Carol Grossmeyer, and the family of David B. Saunders, we’d like to thank all of the writers who submitted their work for consideration in our 2008 Annual Literary Prize competition. This is the first year we offered the $1,000 prize level and an issue to everyone submitting the full entrance fee.

Check back soon or subscribe to our feed for announcements of the judges for the 2009 Annual Literary Prize Competition and the focus (formerly “theme”) of our fall reading period.