Albert Abonado, author of the 2024 National Poetry Series book "A Field Guide for Accidents" will be the final judge for the poetry category of this year's Subnivean Awards.
Subnivean, SUNY Oswego’s student-staffed digital publication, is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its international literary competition, the Subnivean Awards.
“It’s a little mind-boggling,” said Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, the English and creative writing faculty member who designed the popular digital magazine for her students to staff. “To date, our magazine has received submissions from writers in 63 countries and all 50 U.S. states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and we’re excited to read the new contest entries.”
Former Subnivean Awards judges have included Daniel “Lemony Snicket” Handler, U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera, bestselling author Gish Jen, PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle winner Joan Silber and celebrated poets Major Jackson and Kazim Ali. This year, the competition will be judged by award-winning Central New York writers.
The final judge in poetry is Albert Abonado, author of the 2024 National Poetry Series book "A Field Guide for Accidents." Abonado’s work has been praised by luminary poets from Chen Chen to Mahogany L. Brown, and often weaves together themes of migration, diaspora and identity. The National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts have awarded Abonado prestigious fellowships and his poems have appeared in numerous venues including Triquarterly, Boston Review and The Margins, and he served as SUNY Oswego's Artist in Residence for the fall 2024 semester.
Judging fiction is Frazier herself. Her 2024 novel, "Off the Books," earned positive reviews from The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and others, and was included in Bustle's "Most Anticipated" roundup.
Her essays and interviews are featured in People Magazine, Electric Literature, Literary Hub and elsewhere, and she was a San Francisco Library Laureate before moving to New York to teach at the university.
“It’s an utter honor to judge this year’s competition,” she explained, “especially with so many great new things going on at the magazine.”
A webcomic is just one of those new things. Conceived during the fall semester, the first four-panel comic was just released in the magazine’s 11th issue. To learn more about the magazine or international literary competition, visit Subnivean online.
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, the English and creative writing faculty member who designed the popular Subnivean digital magazine for her students to staff, will serve as the publication's fiction judge for the fifth annual Subnivean Awards.