Announcements

2018 Microfiction Contest Results

First Place: “Hangnail” by Tamara Panici
Second Place: “The Sign” by Mark Wagenaar
Third Place: “Daughter” by Leonora Desar

Finalists:
“Manhandling: to maneuver” by Rosemarie Dombrowski
“A Girl Walks on the Moon” by Ruth Joffre
“Turtles” by Tamara Panici
“The Last Mercy” by Mark Wagenaar
“Shelter” by Brian Phillip Whalen

First, Second, and Third Place winners will be published in Issue 100, due out Summer 2018.

We are incredibly thankful for all those who submitted to this year’s contest. We hope to see even more talented writers submit to next year’s contest.

Issue 99 is Now Available!

River Styx Welcomes Jason Lee Brown as Editor-in-Chief

River Styx is excited to announce that Jason Lee Brown will be starting as Editor-in-Chief beginning November 2017! His enthusiasm for not only River Styx but for the literary community as a whole we hope will propel us into Issue 100 and into the future.

Jason Lee Brown is the author of the novel, Prowler: The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the novella, Championship Run, and the poetry chapbook, Blue Collar Fathers. He is co-series editor of New Stories from The Midwest and co-editor of the recently released poetry anthology, The Book of Donuts. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, including the Kenyon Review, Literary Review, North American Review, The Journal, Southern Humanities Review, and Ecotone. He earned his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

River Styx Staff Changes

With a change of current over the summer, River Styx would like to announce new additions to and reassignments of its staff members.

Christina Chady took over in June 2017 as the new Managing Editor after interning at River Styx. She is the main point of contact of the organization at this time and manages everything from production to public relations. She has a degree in Anthropology and International and Areas Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and has a breadth of experience in professional writing, editing, and publication. While in Undergrad, she served as Editor-in-Chief of Spires Intercollegiate Literary and Arts Magazine at Wash U. In addition to her work at River Styx, she owns her own business, Essay with Ease, and works as an international admissions counselor.

Sarah Kuntz Jones is now the Director of the River Styx Reading Series, currently held at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. She has an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University as well as a B.A. in Russian from Truman State University and an M.A. in Russian Language and Literature from SUNY-Albany. She has taught writing and literature at St. Louis Community College and St. Charles Community College. Her prose has appeared in The Summerset Review, The MacGuffin, Midway Journal, and Iron Horse Literary Review, among other literary journals. She was a finalist in Stymie Magazine’s trading card contest and was nominated for the Micro Award in 2012. Sarah received an Artist Support Grant from St. Louis’s Regional Arts Commission to develop her interactive reading series “Prose|Poem,” which for three years featured St. Louis poets and writers.

Brittany Lyons is our new Development Specialist who will oversee the completion of our grant applications and our wide variety of programming. She is a writer, playwright, and former military brat who received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Miami in 2017. While there, she co-founded and served as Managing Editor for Sinking City, University of Miami’s graduate literary magazine. Her first play, The Sun is the Best Bullfighter, received a Mentored Research and Creative Endeavor Award from Florida State University and was featured in President’s Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence. Her fiction has been honored with the Fred Shaw Prize, and her feature writing has appeared in Uptown Magazine, Clayton Living, and FSView & Florida Flambeau. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories that center on moving across the American South. She served as an editorial intern for River Styx in 2016 and has just joined the Missouri History Museum as their Web Developer and Content Manager.

Lizzy Petersen, our former Grants and Outreach Manager, will be taking on a consulting role for River Styx as an Advising Consultant. We are deeply grateful for her continued spirit and support. Previously, she worked as the Poetry Co-Editor of Sycamore Review at Purdue University, where she received her MFA in Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Birmingham Poetry Review, RHINO, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Order Issue 98!

You won’t want to miss out on this issue full of moving poetry about fathers, Nadia Comaneci, disappointment, and more. Take a peek at the table of contents for Issue 98.

Explore the sexual tension in “Truck Manifesto” by Janelle Bassett and familial tension in “Pond Robber” by Woody Skinner, read about men and squirrels and dogs in the essays from Benjamin Busch, then enjoy the first-ever graphic story to be in an issue of River Styx! Tim Lane’s “Steve McQueen Has Vanished” follows the legend after he mysteriously vanished from the public eye and presents the story with hypnotizing art.

In this issue, you’ll also find stories about women, snakes, and music lessons by the winners of the 2017 Microfiction Contest.

Pre-order a copy or renew your subscription. You can also pick up issues at our upcoming readings.

National Endowment for the Arts Funding

We’re excited to announce that we have been awarded a grant from National Endowment for the Arts for our River Styx Reading Series at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis! We are incredibly grateful to the NEA for helping us to continue our work.

2017 Microfiction Contest Winners

We’re so excited to announce the winners of the 2017 Microfiction Contest! We received more than 300 submissions this year. Of those, our editorial panel selected 71 semi-finalists, then 34 finalists before selecting the winners.

Read the winners shown here in Issue 98 of River Styx, due out this summer.

First Place: “Edifice and Artifice in Buda and Pest” by Sean Gill
Second Place: “The Snake” by John Blair
Third Place: “Music Lessons” by Eric Schlich

Honorable Mentions
“In Case of Drowning” by Amy Blakemore
“My Boots” by Yael Hacohen
“What We Did Means Now” by Ethan Feuer

Support River Styx and Our Community

“To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every
good citizen owes to his country.”  – George Washington