I won the Glass Woman Prize

THE GLASS WOMAN PRIZE

THE WINNING STORY FOR THE THIRD GLASS WOMAN PRIZE is Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz's story The Story of My Life (So Far). Please read it at The Story of My Life (So Far) in the online magazine FRiGG. The story was also previously published in Cacophony. To learn more about the author, please read this excellent interview of her by Kelly Spitzer.


I received 261 entries for the Third Glass Woman Prize, all of them moving, many of them excellent. I will post the authors and titles of the twelve top contenders for the prize shortly. As before, I may also post the stories of those authors who give me permission to do so. Thanks to all who submitted! I am excited about your writing, your passion, your thoughts on things that beg to be written. Our voices are important. Above all, keep writing! Ursula Le Guin writes: "We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains."




The FOURTH Glass Woman Prize SUBMISSION period is now in EFFECT. It will be awarded for a work of short fiction or creative non-fiction (prose) written by a woman. Length: between 50 and 5,000 words. The top prize for the fourth Glass Woman Prize award is US $600 and possible (but not obligatory) online publication; I will also award two runner up prizes of $100 each and possible (but not obligatory) online publication.



Subject is open, but must be of significance to women. My criterion is passion, excellence, and authenticity in the woman’s writing voice. Previously published work and simultaneous submissions are OK. Copyright is retained by the author.



There is no reading fee.



Submission deadline: September 21, 2008 (receipt date; anything received after that date will be considered for a future prize). Notification date: December 21, 2008.



The winner will be announced on this website. Submissions will not be returned, rejected, or otherwise acknowledged except for the winner announcement. I promise that every submission will be read with respect and with my commitment to the voices of women in this world.



One submission per person per prize submission period, by email, with "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line and the text pasted in the body of the email (no attachments!) to:



glasswomanprize@comcast.net



or in hard copy and via regular mail, to:



Beate Sigriddaughter
333 East 16th Avenue, #517
Denver, CO 80203



IMPORTANT:
If submitting by email:
- "Glass Woman Prize" in subject line
- Text in body of email

I will regretfully ignore submissions of anything other than specified above, for example: attachments, more than one piece of writing in a giving prize reading period, more than 5,000 words, poetry, or submissions without "Glass Woman Prize" in the subject line of an email.



Some additional information



Who judges the contest?



At the moment I am sole judge. If the prize grows, I hope to be able to invite other women writers to judge.



How is the prize funded?



The prize is funded with ten percent of my personal income. It therefore has a chance of increasing in the future.



Why?



Because this is something I would have liked to have received for myself. Since I haven’t, at least not recently, and in order to make things right with the world all the same, I feel I have to offer it to someone else.



Why the name Glass Woman Prize?



I’ve been playing with the glass woman concept for a while. I want women to be able to acknowledge, transparently, who we are, and that who we are is not trivial and unimportant, despite the fact that it is not typically rewarded in a man-made and money-motivated world.



Here’s my original description of a glass woman as I would depict her if I were a visual artist: a woman of glass, with a blood system and gut system visible inside her, pipes and veins, and in those there would be bits of poetry, newspapers, roses, sentimental things, baby’s teeth, locks of baby hair, all kinds of lace bits, birds, and foxes, ice-picks, wedding rings, veils, and wedding cake doves, graduations gowns, tarot cards, sacred stones, pressed flowers, and a whole lot of joy and a whole lot of sorrow. She’d have a flute and a piano key, an ankh, and a woman symbol (♀), everything, anger and joy, hiking gear, rock climbing gear, motorcycle gear, dirt, fear, bras, lilacs, mirrors, underwear.



What about the brittleness of glass? I would make it unbreakable glass, transparent, but shatter-proof.



Why no reading fee?



Because I absolutely hate the way every other journal or other entity nowadays uses reading fees for contests as fundraisers. I can see their point. I still hate it.



What am I trying to accomplish with this?


I want to help along the cause of women expressing themselves authentically and fearlessly and passionately. It has something to do with a contribution to justice and soul growing in the world.

One of my ex-husbands once said that women don't support each other. I want to either change that or prove it wrong. This is my small gesture of changing the world.