Fried Chicken and Coffee and the Barry Hannah Memorial Competition
on March 1st, 2010 at 9:58 pm
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.
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.pindeldyboz.com/jcheart.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.