Contests
The following awards are offered once a year by the Bellingham Review. There are specific submission guidelines for each award and submission dates vary, so please use the following links to view each contest description and our current winners.
The Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction
Born April 30, 1945, Annie Dillard is best known for her nature-themed writing. She has explored her past and present dealings with nature through poetry, essays and novels. Often compared to Thoreau and other transcendentalist writers, Dillard is unique in her defiance of any strict categorization. As she examines the natural world, her subjects move between wildlife, God and the human condition. Among the nine book-length publications Dillard has published over the past twenty years, her use of multiple genres allows her to seamlessly move from Virginia creeks, to the Puget Sound, to the Galapagos Islands. Her best-known work, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, has been described as a "book of theology." While her more autobiographical book, An American Childhood, explores her early childhood years through nature. Dillard obtained a Master of Arts in English at Hollins College in Virginia. In 1975 she was awarded the Pulitzer for general non-fiction. Dillard continues to write and is now an adjunct professor of English and a writer-in-residence at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
The 49th Parallel Award for Poetry
The 49th Parallel is the nickname for the US/Canada border that stretches from Washington State to Minnesota. Bellingham, Washington, the home of Western Washington University and the Bellingham Review lies just shy of the border.
The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction
Born in 1945 in Alabama, Wolff has been regarded as the master of memoir and short stories. His best known work, This Boy's Life, recounts the story of his early childhood years in the Northwest and was the basis for a 1993 motion picture starring Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio. A three-time winner of the O. Henry Award, Tobias Wolff is celebrated for his collections of short stories, novels, and memoirs. Wolff's second collection of short stories, Back in the World (1985), was hailed as a sensitive work of fiction focusing primarily on the experiences of returning Vietnam veterans. In literary circles, Wolff is revered as much as a teacher as he is as a writer. After completing a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, Wolff served as the Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at that institution (1975-1978). He later spent 17 years leading the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University (1980-97). In 1997, he returned to Stanford where he currently resides and teaches.
Wolff is the past editor of various anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (1993), The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories (1994), Best American Short Stories (1994), Best New American Voices (2000), and Writers Harvest 3 (2000). His writings have appeared in the Washington Post, New Yorker, Granta, and Esquire.