Fried Chicken and Coffee and the Barry Hannah Memorial Competition

Bar­ry Hannah

I learned on Face­book tonight that Bar­ry Han­nah died. I have no con­fir­ma­tion officially–edit in, look here for con­fir­ma­tion– but I have no rea­son to dis­be­lieve my FB acquain­tances, either. After talk­ing it out and over with my love­ly and beautiful–and let's not for­get smart–wife,  here's what we want to do. FCAC and Heather Sul­li­van will pro­vide a pack­et of prizes for a com­pe­ti­tion in Bar­ry Hannah's hon­or. I'll think of a good name for it so it might even make the com­pe­ti­tion vita-wor­thy, like The Bar­ry Han­nah Memo­r­i­al Com­pe­ti­tion.

  • First prize: pack­et of Han­nah books,  Air­ships, Ray, Geron­i­mo Rex, a $25.00 gift card from Barnes & Noble
  • Sec­ond prize: Rose Met­al Press Field Guide to Writ­ing Flash Fic­tion and my book Break­ing it Down.
  • Third prize: Break­ing it Down
  • All plac­ing sto­ries will be pub­lished in Fried Chick­en and Cof­fee, and I reserve the right to choose oth­ers for pub­li­ca­tion out­side the com­pe­ti­tion para­me­ters, if I feel so motivated.

Here are the guidelines:

  • sto­ries must be between 2000 and 4000 words; This means 4001 is unac­cept­able, as is 1999.
  • sto­ries must be sent to this email address: hannahmemorialcomp@​gmail.​com
  • sto­ries must be sent before mid­night on Wednes­day March 31st
  • sto­ries must be in MS-Word or rich text for­mat and have no name or iden­ti­fy­ing marks  (please check your head­ers and edit-track­ing fea­tures) with­in them
  • final­ly and most impor­tant­ly, sen­tence by sen­tence, Bar­ry Han­nah was one of our best.  Be sure your sto­ry embod­ies his crafts­man­ship, espe­cial­ly the art of the pun­gent and rev­e­la­to­ry sin­gle sentence.
  • there is no sub­mis­sion or read­ing fee.

Heather will ren­der the sto­ries anony­mous if they are not already, pass them on to me and I will pick a win­ner. Prizes will be sent in the sec­ond week of April or soon­er. Ask ques­tions in the com­ments sec­tion. This post will also appear as a sta­t­ic page on the site, so you can direct peo­ple more effec­tive­ly if you share the news.

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One Response to Fried Chicken and Coffee and the Barry Hannah Memorial Competition

  1. Jeff says:

    Bar­ry is why I am a writer today.

    1985–86, I was a stu­dent at Olé Miss and I had heard that Bar­ry Han­nah would be teach­ing. A poet­ry pro­fes­sor rec­om­mend­ed that I get to know him, saw I went the library and picked up a book. That book was Airships. 

    Over the sum­mer, I wrote a short sto­ry, and as soon as I got back to school, I found his office and asked him to read it. He did, gave me some good advice and lots of encour­age­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he wasn't teach­ing a writ­ing course that semes­ter, but he gave me per­mis­sion to sign up for his grad­u­ate-lev­el Devel­op­ment of the Short Sto­ry class, even though I was an under­grad­u­ate with bare­ly any Eng­lish lit class­es, because I had just changed my major from Com­put­er Sci­ence to English. 

    This is where it hap­pened. I wrote a sec­ond sto­ry and showed it to him, he took it, and instead of respond­ing direct­ly to me, he read it out loud to his grad­u­ate short fic­tion class. With me sit­ting there. Then we dis­cussed and dis­sect­ed it. Talk about a bap­tism in fire! But I was hooked.

    Next semes­ter, I took his writ­ing workshop. 

    And the next semes­ter I was at a dif­fer­ent school because my mon­ey had run out. I met Bar­ry a few more times after that — at book sign­ings most­ly, once when he was a vis­it­ing writer. The last time I saw him was at the Con­fer­ence for the Book a few years ago. He rec­og­nized me. The last time I wrote to him was after the pub­li­ca­tion of my sto­ry "Har­vest My Heart" at Pin­deldy­boz. http://​www​.pin​deldy​boz​.com/​j​c​h​e​a​r​t​.​htm

    I wrote to tell him how much he was in this sto­ry, how much he influ­enced it. It sounds sil­ly, but I always want­ed to live up to him, to be the writer he thought I could be. I don't know if I will ever reach that, it's still some­thing I'm work­ing toward.

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