(a Press 53 publication)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

ISSUE 211, JANUARY — MARCH 2022

Welcome to our first issue of 2022! Here you will find information on the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Awards for Poetry and Short Fiction, with judges Faith Shearin (poetry) and Jubal Tiner (short fiction). You’ll also find our 2021 Pushcart Prize nominees, recent winners of our free, monthly 53-Word Story Contest, poetry selections by our guest editor for poetry, LaWanda Walters, short fiction selections by our guest editor for short fiction, Michael Beadle, and an introduction to four authors in our Press 53 Spotlight.

Browse our selections for this issue by clicking on the photos or the blue links. Enjoy!

THE 2022 PRIME NUMBER MAGAZINE AWARDS FOR POETRY AND SHORT FICTION ARE OPEN NOW FOR ENTRIES UNTIL THE END OF MARCH!

Meet our Judges

Waiting to read your work are poetry judge Faith Shearin, author of Lost Language and other collections, and short fiction judge Jubal Tiner, author of the award-winning story collection The Waterhouse. First Prize in each category is $1,000 plus a Pushcart Prize nomination and publication in Issue 229 of Prime Number Magazine on October 1, 2022. Read Faith’s and Jubal’s bios and get information on how to enter.

Congratulations to our 2021 Pushcart Prize nominees!

Each year, small presses can nominate up to six pieces they published that year for a Pushcart Prize.
Please join us in celebrating our 2020 nominees.

Winners of our FREE monthly 53-Word Story Contest

A free, monthly writing competition. Join our email list to get your prompt on the first day of each month.
Write a 53-word story about (prompt)
Then send your story by the fifteenth (15th) day to 53wordstory@gmail.com

Editors' Selections

Each issue, we ask our guest editors to select their favorite poems or stories from those submitted during our open submission period. Submissions are free and only accepted through Submittable the first two months of each quarter. Here are the guest editors for Issue 211, January-March 2022.

Guest Editor for Poetry

Lawanda walters

LaWanda Walters is the author of Light Is the Odalisque (from the Silver Concho Poetry Series by Press 53, with editors Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root). LaWanda grew up in Mississippi and North Carolina. She earned her BA at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, an MA in Literature from California State University at Humboldt, and an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University, where she won the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Cincinnati Review, Cutthroat, The Georgia Review, The Laurel Review, North American Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Southern Poetry Review, and Sou’wester. Her poem “Marilyn Monroe” appears in Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century (Dartmouth College Press, 2014), and “Goodness in Mississippi” was chosen by Sherman Alexie for Best American Poetry 2015. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2020. She is the mother of two grown children and lives with her husband, John Drury, in Cincinnati.

LaWanda’s Selections

Guest Editor for Short Fiction

Michael Beadle

Michael Beadle is a poet, author, and writer-in-residence living in Raleigh, North Carolina. His short fiction has been published in BOMBFIRE, Apple Valley Review, and moonShine review. He won First Place in the Ruth Moose Flash Fiction Contest 2020-21. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Beasts of Eden (Press 53), and Primer (Main Street Rag), a finalist in the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest. His poems have been featured in Kakalak, River Heron Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. VII: North Carolina. Teaching, performing and writing throughout North Carolina for the past two decades, Beadle has served as a poet-in-residence at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, an A+ Fellow for the North Carolina A+ Schools program, an instructor at Duke Young Writers’ Camp (Duke University), an emcee for the state finals of North Carolina Poetry Out Loud, and student contest manager for the North Carolina Poetry Society.

Michael’s Selections

Press 53 Spotlight

In each issue of Prime Number Magazine we showcase four authors from our publisher, Press 53. Our intent is to introduce our readers to more great writing, and to help our publisher find more readers for these writers and their books. Enjoy!

Announcement

Prime Number Magazine will be closed for submissions January-February 2022 for Issue 227, July-August 2022, which will feature our winners of the April-June 53-Word Story Contest and Press 53’s 2020-2021 “pandemic authors” who were unable to have public readings to share their poems and stories. I hope you will help us celebrate these authors at that time.

prime number

: any integer other than 0 or ± 1 that is not divisible without remainder by any other integers except ± 1 and ± the integer itself (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary)

In literature: poetry and prose that is distinctive and unique (Prime Number Magazine)

Prime Number Magazine is a Press 53 publication, founded by Clifford Garstang and Kevin Morgan Watson on July 17, 2010, beginning with Issue 2, and continuing with all issues in prime numbers