Understanding the Pushcart Prize: A Writer’s Achievement

A message of congratulations flashed on the corner of my computer screen and I opened my email. “I’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize,” I shouted. Ten years earlier, I’d started to see colleagues listing a Pushcart Prize nomination on their resume. Would someone ever nominate me for a Pushcart Prize? That day had finally arrived.

An editor, someone who had never met me, had singled out one of my pieces, to be nominated. They’d deemed that something I’d written out of all the pieces they’d published in the previous year, had been good enough for a Pushcart.

What is a Pushcart Prize?

My husband wanted to know what the hoopla was all about, when I shared my good news. I knew it meant inclusion in a prestigious anthology, but where did the name come from and what is the history of its founding? I needed to do a little research.

NAME and FOUNDING HISTORY

A pushcart is a small cart pushed by hand, frequently used by street peddlers to transport and sell their merchandise. In 1972 a group of writers, led by Paris Review editor George Plimpton, walked up New York’s Fifth Avenue selling their own books from pushcarts. They were angry at the major publishers, (and there were many more in 1972 than there are in 2024), for not doing enough to promote and distribute their work. Inspired by the demonstration, Bill Henderson, then a young editor at Doubleday and his wife at the time, Nancy, started Pushcart Press. Located in Yonkers, New York, their goal was to support and promote the efforts of overlooked writers and small presses.

The first publication of Pushcart Press in 1973, Publish it Yourself Handbook, has gone through four printings and has been a touchstone for the independent publishing movement, but it is the Pushcart Prize Anthology that has created the most long ranging impact on literature.

According to the Pushcart Press website: “In 1976, Henderson and a group of Founding Editors that included Paul Bowles, Ralph Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates and Reynolds Price, started the Pushcart Prize anthology to recognize and celebrate the best work in the rapidly expanding independent publishing movement. Through the years since, the Prize has honored the art of thousands of writers and hundreds of presses. Each edition features reprints of work by about sixty authors from dozens of presses as selected from nominations by small press editors and Pushcart’s staff of distinguished Contributing Editors.”

PROCESS: Who Makes the Nominations & How are the Winners Picked?

Each year, Editor/Publisher Bill Henderson leads a team of contributing editors who cull through the thousands of nominations. Editors of small independent presses can nominate no more than six pieces of writing. Pushcart also accepts nominations from their staff of Contributing Editors. “The nominations,” according to their website, “may be any combination of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs or stand-alone excerpts from novels. We welcome translations, reprints and both traditional and experimental writing.” The pieces must have been published or are scheduled for publication in the current calendar year.

If you are a writer, you know how hard it is to get published in the current competitive market of literary magazines. You are competing with hundreds or thousands of writers for a few slots. To be nominated for a Pushcart, the editors have singled your work out as being amongst the best pieces they’ve published that year. They’re hoping you’ll be picked. The liklihood of being selected to be published in the Pushcart Anthology is small, but just being nominated is an honor.

The Pushcart Anthology

Approximately sixty works are published in the yearly anthology. While the press was founded to challenge the establishment, they have been embraced by the publishing industry:

As posted on their website:

The Pushcart Prize was named among the most influential projects in the history of American publishing by Publishers Weekly.

Winner of the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award.

A New York Times
Book Review notable book
of the year.

A Book of the Month Club selection.

Winner of the
Publishers Weekly Carey Thomas Award for Creative Publishing

While there is no monetary prize for inclusion in the yearly anthology, to be included is a coveted honor. Agents and publishers read the anthology closely. They know, there is a high probability they might discover a writer they’ve previously overlooked.

A copy of the yearly anthology is a great addition to your library. With so much to read and so many publications, to be able to access such a variety of work published by small presses in the previous year is a useful tool for discerning readers and writers. It’s on my Xmas list.

Thank You

Thank you for reading this week’s post. If you are curious as to which piece of my writing was nominated, it’s a fifty-word story, a piece of micro-fiction “The First is the Best” published by -Blink-Ink in their June Addicted to Love #56 issue. Inspired by my memories of cutting out valentine hearts from red construction paper and my daughter Alex’s nursery school crush on a boy in her class, it’s a challenge to build a scene that resonates in fifty words or less. Are you up to the task?

Writing Prompt

In 50 words or less tell a story on the theme “Not What I Expected.” Maybe you didn’t get the dinner you were anticipating, maybe when you opened the package it wasn’t what you thought it would be, maybe the Dating Ap screwed up and the “wrong person” showed up at the coffee shop, maybe the class you signed up for is an entirely differently class… You get the idea. What did you do? Or what did your fictitious character do?

And if you write something you are pleased with and would like to share, please send it via the comment button because it’s only 50 words!

Have fun and if you haven’t already signed up to follow me, it is FREE. And please, if you like my writing, you can support my efforts by buying a copy of my chapbook RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN- Poetry, Flash CNF and Short Essays (Old Scratch Press Sept. 2024) a great gift to yourself and for friends at $8.95.

Originally published at http://nadjamaril.com on November 11, 2024.