Regulus Press, located in the Pacific Northwest, is dedicated to publishing difficult, disturbing, and occasionally defenestratable fiction and poetry.
Congratulations to Kate Segriff whose story "Female Jockeys" (published in the Regulus Press Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition anthology AGAINST THE BAR) is included in her debut short story collection ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY released this week from Canadian independent publisher Riddle Fence. It's available now!
Animals in Captivity
The short novel THE TIMELESS MACHINE by Mark Malamud is now available as an audiobook. If you haven’t already read this reworking of Well’s Time Machine, now is your chance to give it a try!
As you know, we raised $2,000 for Ukraine this year. This is the first time we've used the competition to support a cause, and we're so happy to have been able to contribute so much. We're curious what *you* thought. Good idea, bad idea?
If you think it was a good idea, please consider purchasing a copy of this year's anthology I FOUND HAPPINESS & TRAGEDY. As we've said before, YOU are the key to the success of literary taxidermy—your actions determine the competition's future. We took a risk this year, and we'd like to think our community of literary taxidermists wants to see the competition continue.
Of course, if you didn't like the idea of our donating a percentage of our profits to a cause, that's fine, too. But we'd love to hear why!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/173609744X/
Have you had a chance to read this year's anthology I FOUND HAPPINESS & TRAGEDY? If you have, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. We'd love love love to hear your thoughts!
If you haven't had a chance to read the collection yet, or if you haven't picked up your own copy, please do! (It's available as paperback or digital download.)
Writers came from over forty countries this year, tackling the first and last lines of Edgar Allan Poe, Langston Hughes, A. A. Milne, and Agatha Christie. We're super proud of the work they've done. (And we think you'll like it, too!)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/173609744X/
The results are in!
Our latest anthology of literary taxidermy, I Found Happiness & Tragedy, is now available as paperback or digital download. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/173609744X) Writers from over forty countries tackled the first and last lines of Edgar Allan Poe, Langston Hughes, A. A. Milne, and Agatha Christie. Come see what this year's batch of literary taxidermists wrote!
This was a great year. We read nearly a thousand stories and poems, and were able to raise $2,000 for Ukraine. We're super proud of the 2022 collection and would love to share the idea of literary taxidermy with as many readers as possible. YOU are the key to the success of literary taxidermy—past, present, and future. Please consider ordering your copy today. (Makes a great holiday gift, too!)
Happy holidays!
We're pleased to announce the WINNER of the SHORT STORY contest of the 2022 Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Langston Hughes, and A. A. Milne. It’s a story focused on a particular kind of human anguish, but it does so through the lens of fantastic fiction. Death pays a visit to the elderly protagonist, but his arrival isn’t so much macabre as melancholic, even comforting.
Selected from nearly a thousand submissions, this story impressed, delighted, and thrilled our early readers and final judges. Finding extraordinary works like this is the reason we run the competition, and we know you'll love reading it, too! The author of this winning story will receive US $500 and a copy of this year's anthology.
Please join us in offering congratulations to — CLARE KATE MAHON, an Irish teacher and doctoral student living in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and author of the short story “The Stone.”
You can find her story, as well as those of all our short story and poetry finalists, in the 2022 anthology of literary taxidermy I FOUND HAPPINESS & TRAGEDY. Available now!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/173609744X
We will begin to announce the short story and poetry winners for this year's Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition in one hour....
Please stand by!
We're pleased to announce the twenty Finalists for this year's Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition—inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Langston Hughes, and A. A. Milne. It really was another year of extraordinary writing, and we can't wait to share these stories and poems with you!
From Ireland to Aotearoa, from a chance encounter to a planned revenge, from an evil older brother to a gun-toting NannyBot—these stories and poems, selected from nearly a thousand submissions, delighted both early readers and final judges, and will be included in this year's literary taxidermy anthology, soon to be published by Regulus Press.
Please join us in offering congratulations to all the Finalists — great work!
Stories
• Clare Kate Mahon, "The Stone"
• Jessica Grene, "Highly Flammable"
• C.S. Griffel, "Epsilon 581"
• Frank Ruscitti, "Souvenirs"
• Erika Bauer, "Because Cowboys Ride Horses Into Sunsets"
• Sam Bshero, "Lina"
• Eleanor Ingbretson, "Rodrigo's Revenge"
• Dee Raspin, "A Tale of Two Tailors"
• Larissa Thomson, "The King of the Cambie Street Bridge"
• Amanda le Bas de Plumetot, "Pitch Drop"
• William Sharp, "Colder than Ice Cream"
• Amanda Marlowe, "In His Own Image"
Poems
• Annamaria Formichella, "Cold Comfort"
• Philip Amat, "Ritual Pleasures"
• Trudi Petersen, "Valparaiso"
• Susan B Borgersen, "So You Call This Progress Said Mother"
• Gail Ingram, "Aotearoa, the Land of the Milk White Proud"
• Isobel Cunningham, "Amor Vincit"
• Sean Fowler Green, "Long Ago, It Was"
• Karan Kapoor, "My Childhood and Its Scent of a Bird Caressed"
Of course we're not finished yet! Two of these twenty pieces — one short story and one poem — will be crowned Winners of the 2022 Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition. Stay tuned!
We're pleased to announce the thirty Honorable Mentions for this year's Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition. Although these stories and poems did not make it into the final anthology, they all reached the penultimate round of selection, impressing our many readers. We thoroughly enjoyed each of these, and we're certain you'll see more from these writers in the future.
Congratulations to all the Honorable Mentions!
Short Stories
• Julia Brieger, “The Flooding”
• Kim Dicso, “Son of a Beth”
• Rhonda Valentine Dixon, “Going Down”
• Evan Gillespie, “Disgruntled Short Story”
• Ruth Goldberg, “Bloodlines”
• Trudy Graham, “Choices”
• Jacqui Greaves, “You Are Already Dead”
• Melissa Gunn, “Seeds of Hope”
• Emily Hanlon, “Eclipsed”
• Margo Karolyi, “Into the Woods”
• Simon King, “Heed the Silent”
• Michael Kuty, “Beach Blanket Bloodshed”
• Charlin McIsaac, “Uncle Liam’s Iron Foot”
• Melanie McKerchar, "Geophagy"
• Sue Scarlett Montgomery, “End the Patriarchy”
• Adrian F. Roscher, “At Bergdorf’s”
• Maria Rybakova, “Shameshame”
• Andrea L. Staum, “The Wretched Bond”
• Lisa VanGalen, “Endings, Beginnings, and Something In Between”
• Kyle Woods, “10,000 Years of Darkness”
Poetry
• Helen Anderson, “Findlings”
• Goh Yong Ming Calvin, “Foreward”
• Steven Case, “Neptune’s Chains”
• Danielle Davey, “Le Ballet de la Nuit”
• Sean Fallon, “First Words”
• Hawk and Young, “Schrodingers Bomb Shelter”
• Susan Jane Hay, “Elevated Conversation”
• Catherine Lee, “Dreams of Master’s Sons or Whirling Sun?”
• Sean McConville, “The Ballad of John Jacob Finnegan”
• Paul Joseph Rodriguez, “The Collector”
In recognition of their fine work, each Honorable Mention will be listed in this year's anthology and will receive written feedback from one of our editors on their submission. And stay tuned! We'll be announcing the Finalists next....
Just THREE DAYS to go before we begin to announce the results of the 2022 Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition. We can't wait to share with you the thrilling heterogeneity of stories and poems that arrived in our digital mailbox this year—including 30 Honorable Mentions, 20 Finalists, and 2 Winners!
Of course, really, everyone who participated this year is a winner. It takes a special courage and enthusiasm to rise to the challenge of literary taxidermy, and we appreciate the time and effort and talent and heart that went into each submission. Every story is worth being told, and every poem is worth being written. Whatever the outcome of this year's competition, never let the judgments of other people stop you from telling your story. Keep putting word after word, on page after page. Allow magic to happen. You will succeed!
We've got some exciting news! In just SEVEN DAYS we will make our first announcement of the results of the 2022 Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition. We can hardly contain ourselves!
In the meantime, we want to show our appreciation for those people and organizations without whom this competition couldn't exist.
First, our judges! A remarkable group of professional writers and editors from all walks of the literary life, including poets, journalists, memoirists, humorists, and novelists. They had a challenging task, separating wheat from wheat, and we are grateful for their enthusiastic and perspicacious participation. THANK YOU, Catherine Barnett, Cuifen Chen, Elisa Donovan, Danny Gardner, Rick Moody, Brian Parks, Michael Pronko, and Cameron Tuttle!
And, second, to all our hard-working editors, readers, and staff who worked tirelessly over the past six months to pull this competition together. THANK YOU!
It's been an incredible three months here in the Pacific Northwest, reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading every entry in this year's competition. This year participants were asked to create original stories and poems using the opening and closing lines from four different works:
“Happiness,” a poem by A. A. Milne
“As I Grew Older,” a poem by Langston Hughes
“The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor,” a story by Agatha Christie
“Ms. Found in a Bottle,” a story by Edgar Allan Poe
And wow did everyone deliver! We passed a shortlist of incredible work to our eight illustrious judges, and now the countdown begins!
Before the end of November we will announce the Honorable Mentions for this year's competition. Shortly thereafter we will announce the twenty Finalists whose stories and poems made it into this year's anthology. And shortly after *that* we will announce this year's short story and poetry Winners.
We hope you're excited — we certainly are!
More stats from the 2022 competition! Here's a breakdown of the education levels of those who participated. Quite the academic crowd!
More stats from the 2022 competition! Curious how long it took everyone to complete their story or poem this year? So were we! Here's the answer!
More stats from the 2022 competition! Here's the gender breakdown for this year's participants. The competition has generally been 2/3 female, 1/3 male for all five years.
More stats from the 2022 competition! Here's a breakdown of the ages of this year's participants. We welcomed writers from under 18 to over 65. An excellent year!
More stats from 2022: The poetry vs. prose breakdown becomes more interesting when we drill down into each author. Most stories this year were inspired by Poe, while most of the poems were inspired equally by Poe and Hughes, with Milne a close runner-up. (Virtually no one attempted a poem using Christie’s lines—and we're not sure why!)
More statistics from the Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition! The breakdown of poetry vs. prose submissions (across all four authors) is pretty much what we saw last year (the first year we awarded prizes for poetry). This year, poetry accounted for 29% of all entries. (Last year poetry accounted for 21%.)
We offered four choices of first & last lines to our writers during this year's Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition, and the words of Poe, Milne, and Hughes attracted the lion's share of submissions. What put people off Christie? We really expected the last line of Hughes' poem to be considered the most challenging.
This year's competition was our most international yet, with submissions from over 39 countries. That's nearly 50% more than previous years. This is the first year we've received anything from Estonia, Kazakhstan, Korea, Nigeria, and the UAE. It’s also our first year to receive stories & poems from Ukraine, which made us very happy! Take a look at this year's distribution!
This was the Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition's biggest year yet, along nearly every axis, including submissions, and we are busy busy busy reading a truly awe-inspiring mountain of short stories and poems. We hope to make an announcement of winners, runners-up, and honorable mentions sometime in the fall.
In the meantime, over the next month or so, we thought we'd share with you some statistics from this year's competition. Stay tuned!
LAST CHANCE to have your voice heard in this year's Literary Taxidermy Survey. If you participated in the 2022 competition, you should have received a link in email. If you haven't yet completed the survey, please do! Deadline is Saturday, August 13th. Thanks!
Message from Literary Taxidermy HQ — If you participated in this year's competition, you should have received an email with a link to this year's Literary Taxidermy Survey. We really want to hear your thoughts about the competition, and to learn a little bit about you as a writer.
If you missed the link, let us know!
Thank you, everyone, for your enthusiasm and participation in this year's Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition. You may put down your pens and scalpels. The submission period has closed.
Now the exciting part begins—for us. We get to read the hundreds and hundreds of stories & poems you sent in!
We'll continue to post competition updates here, on our website, and via our mailing list. Winners, runners-up, and honorable mentions will be announced in the fall.
Again: THANK YOU!
https://literarytaxidermy.com
“You fail only if you stop writing.” –Ray Bradbury
(Or if you don't submit your exemplary story or poem to this year’s competition! Today’s the day!)
1 day to go!
https://literarytaxidermy.com
Lions, and tigers, and deadlines — OH MY!
The deadline for the Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition is at noon on JULY 11th, 2022. To be eligible for consideration, we must receive your story or poem by that date. That's less than one week to go. The clock is ticking REALLY LOUDLY!
Some of our favorite recent titles: “Don Donna," "Lespoino," and “Backup Backup."
Grab you pen, scalpel, smock, and imagination. Then get to work. There's not much time left, and we can't wait to see what you come with!
https://literarytaxidermy.com
Just 4 days to go. That's less than a single hand of days.
The deadline for the Literary Taxidermy Writing Competition is at noon on JULY 11th, 2022. To be eligible for consideration, we must receive your story or poem by that date.
Excitement is building here at competition HQ. This has been a great adventure, but we're nearing the end. So put those finishing touches on your taxidermy, and send your work in.
We can't wait to see what you come with!
https://literarytaxidermy.com
Tick-tock tick-tock. Just 5 days to go.
The deadline for the LTWC is JULY 11th. That means you've got less than 1 week to sew up your ENTRY for the competition.
"That's ridiculous!" murmured the Ticktockman behind his mask. "Check your watch!"
https://literarytaxidermy.com
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