The 2023 Kay W. Levin Award for Short Nonfiction
Deadline: Postmarked by January 31, 2024
Entry fee: $25 (or $15 for members of Arts + Literature Laboratory)
The Kay W. Levin Award for Short Nonfiction goes to the best piece of short nonfiction published by a Wisconsin writer in the contest year. See full contest guidelines.
First Place: $500 award and five-day stay at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, WI ($895 value)
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Honorable Mention: $50 and a five-day stay at Ernest Hüpeden's Painted Forest in Valton, WI ($800 value)
Judge: Kristine Langley Mahler
Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of A Calendar Is a Snakeskin (Autofocus, 2023) and Curing Season: Artifacts (WVU Press, 2022). Her work has been supported by the Nebraska Arts Council, named Notable in Best American Essays 2019 and 2021, and published in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and Speculative Nonfiction, among others. A memoirist experimenting with the truth on the suburban prairie outside Omaha, Nebraska, Kristine is also the director of Split/Lip Press.
History
Kay W. Levin (1925- 1989) was a board member of the Council for Wisconsin Writers in its formative years. After her death in 1990, her family endowed the award for short nonfiction in her memory. Ms. Levin had written children’s fiction before she and her husband, Robert, moved to Cleveland, Wisconsin, in 1974 from Chicago. Slowing to the pace of rural life, she turned her attention to essay writing, using as her inspiration events from everyday life on Kingfisher Farm, where they lived. Her articles on topics as diverse as her daughter’s death in a car crash to the harvesting of maple syrup appeared in The Milwaukee Journal Wisconsin Magazine among other publications. Levin was a champion of Wisconsin writers and the award in her name lives on to encourage essay writers into the future.
Previous Winners:
2022
First Place: "Someone Else's Language"Guernica Magazine) by Kate Vieira, Madison, WI
Kate Vieira is an international ethnographer of writing, a creative nonfiction writer, and a single mom. She holds the Susan J. Cellmer distinguished chair in literacy at UW Madison, where she teaches writing across the school of education, Chican@/Latin@ Studies, and Second Language Acquisition, and where she co-directs the Greater Madison Writing Project. Her books include American by Paper, Writing for Love and Money, and a co-edited volume with Jhoana Patiño Lopez, Paz: Escribiendo un Corazón Común—collectively representing work across Brazil, Latvia, Colombia, and with Luso communities in the U.S. Her personal essays have appeared in Guernica, The Sun, First Person Singular, Tin House (online), and Writing on the Edge. She is working on a memoir about single parenting across borders called Broken Home. You can read more about what she is up to here.
Honorable Mention: "A Headstone for Zach" (The Delacorte Review) by Lawrence Tabak, Madison, WI
Madison, Wis.-based, Tabak was born and raised in Dubuque, Iowa. He attended Northwestern University and the University of Iowa, from which he holds BA and MA degrees. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Salon, themillions, Fast Company, the in-flight magazines for United, American, Continental, America West and TWA, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times. His novel In Real Life (Tuttle) was commercially published in 2014 and his latest book, Foxconned, an exposé on economic development as seen through the Foxconn in Wisconsin fiasco, was published in 2021 by the University of Chicago Press. It received the best nonfiction book of the year award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. He is married and has two boys, Josh, a tech executive in San Francisco, and Zachary, who died in 2018 in a car/pedestrian accident.
2019
Matt Blessing, Madison, for “Alaska Ho! Arville Schaleben and the Mantanuska Valley Colony,” Wisconsin Magazine of History
Honorable Mention: Chris Chan, Milwaukee, for “Someday the Truth Will Come Out: The Lemberger Family and the Murder that Stunned Wisconsin,” Sherlock Homes Mystery Magazine
2018
Christina Clancy, Madison, “Lost Cause,” The Sun Magazine
Honorable Mention: Judith Steininger, Milwaukee, for “The Girl(s) From Montana,” Montana Quarterly
2017
Ronnie Hess, Madison, for “Berlin Letters,” Poor Yorick Literary Journal
Honorable Mention: Tamara Thomsen, Paul Reckner and Richard J. Boyd, Madison, for “Solving the Mystery of the SS. Lakeland,” Wisconsin Magazine of History
2016
Carolyn Kott Washburne, Whitefish Bay, for “A Natural Ken,” Milwaukee Magazine
Honorable Mention: Patti See, Chippewa Falls, for “Diary of a Bone Marrow Donor” 1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction
2014
Catherine Jagoe, Madison, “A Ring of Bells,” Gettysburg Review
Honorable Mention: Patti See, Chippewa Falls, “Hunter’s Mother,” The WayFarer
2013
Craig Reinbold, Milwaukee, “The Girl in the Photograph,” Ruminate Magazine
Honorable Mention: Jill Sisson Quinn, Scandinavia, “The Myth of Home,” Ecotone Journal
2012
George Johnson, Madison, “The American Pearl Rush: Its Wisconsin Beginnings,” Wisconsin Magazine of History
Honorable Mention: Tom Matthews, Wauwatosa, “Almost Famous,” Milwaukee Magazine
2011
Mary Ellen Gabriel, Madison, “Ne-rucha-ja: The Forgotten Tale of Frost’s Woods and Charles E. Brown’s Fight to Save It for the Ho-Chunk,” Wisconsin Magazine of History
Honorable Mention: Wendy Vardaman, Madison, “The Essay That I Begin Writing While Walking to the Wisconsin Capitol Trying to Discern the Right Question, 2/24/11,” Verse Wisconsin
2010
Krista Eastman, Madison, “Layers of Ice,” Witness
Honorable Mention: Tom Matthews, Wauwatosa, “Heart Breaker,” Milwaukee Magazine
2009
Robert Root, Waukesha, “Postscript to a Postscript ‘The Ring of Time,’” The Pinch
Honorable Mention: Michael Gordon, Milwaukee, “To Make a Clean Sweep: Milwaukee Confronts an Anarchist Scare in 1917,” Wisconsin Magazine of History
2008
David McGlynn, Appleton, “Hydrophobia,” The Missouri Review
Honorable Mention: Kurt Chandler, Wauwatosa, “The Joker,” Milwaukee Magazine
2007
Abbey Frucht, Oshkosh, “Blue Shirt,” Brevity Magazine
Honorable Mention: Frank Bures, Verona, “Spirits in the Material World,” Washington Post Magazine
2006
Harriet Brown, Madison, “One Spoonful at a Time,” The New York Times Magazine
Honorable Mention: Alison Townsend, Stoughton, “Praising What Persists: Reflections on the Personal Essay and Memoirs,” Arts and Letters
Honorable Mention: Julie Buckles, Washburn, “Cleora on Ice,” Fourth Genre
Honorable Mention: Tom Pamperin, Chippewa Falls, “All Right, Then, I’ll Go to Hell,” English Journal
Honorable Mention: David E. McGlynn, Appleton, “Detachment,” Ninth Letter
2005
Karen J. Coates, Brookfield, “Painting Cambodia for Judy,” Kyoto Journal
Honorable Mention: Jim Hazard, Whitefish Bay, “The Day I Met the Late Edna St. Vincent Millay,” 3711 Atlantic
Honorable Mention: Kurt Chandler, Milwaukee, “At War,” Milwaukee Magazine
2004
Jack Bushnell, Eau Claire, “A Baseball Boy Turns Fifty,” Elysian Fields Quarterly
Honorable Mention: Mary Van de Kamp Nohl, Oconomowoc, “A Second Chance,” Milwaukee Magazine
Honorable Mention: Richard Thieme, Fox Point, “I Remember Mama,” Heartlands
2003
Kurt Chandler, Milwaukee, “No Exit,” Milwaukee Magazine
Honorable Mention: Kent Williams, Madison, “Isn’t It Romantic,” Isthmus
Honorable Mention: Willa Schmidt, Madison, “Second Life,” Potomac Review
2002
Karen J. Coates, Brookfield, “Passing the Test: Reconciling Cambodia,” The Chattahoochee Review
Honorable Mention: Kent Williams, Madison, “Jackass Nation,” Isthmus
Honorable Mention: Pegi Taylor, Milwaukee, “I Am a Child Molester,” Milwaukee Magazine
2001
Bruce Murphy, Milwaukee, “Our Billion-Dollar Baby,” Milwaukee Magazine
2000
(tie)
Kurt Chandler, Milwaukee, “The Sinking of the Linda E,” Milwaukee Magazine, and Carolyn Kott Washburne, Shorewood, “Zink the Zebra,” Exclusively Yours
1999
Robert McGuire, “Witness to Rage”
1998
John Hildebrand, “Coming Home”
1997
Kent Williams, “The ‘Real’ World: Special Effects Are Blurring the Line”
1996
Kurt Chandler, “Living Out Loud”
1995
Mary VandeKamp Nohl, “A Jury of Peers,” Milwaukee Magazine
1994
Bruce Murphy, “A Kind of Loving”
1993
Stephen Filmanowicz, “Elvis, Russ and Me”
1992
Bruce Murphy, “Endangered Species”
1991
Mary VandeKamp Nohl, “The Unmaking of a University”
1990
Judith Woodburn, “Are We Driving Ourselves Crazy?”
1989
Bruce Murphy, “Risky Business”
1988
Mary VandeKamp Nohl, “Florence Nightingale is Dead”
1987
Tim Howard McDonnell, “I Miss You Nurse”
1986
Jocelyn Riley, “A Death of One’s Own”
1985
Bruce Murphy, “Machine Dreams”
1984
(tie)
Jackie Loohauis, “Desire Among Writers” and Susan Pigorsch, “Away and Aloft”
1983
Martin Hintz, “The Bahamian Bard”
1982
Felix Pollak, “Never Say Die”
1981
Dale Reich, “One Year in Vietnam”
1980
Jack Randolph, “The Grand Review”
1979
Jeff Dean, “Canoes and Different Drummers”
1978
Robert Gard, “The Haunting of the Wild”
1977
Ray Helminiak, “And Then There Were None”
1976
Nancy Mack, “Death and My Father”
1975
G.H. Schoff, “Something There Is About a Crane”
1974
Arthur Hove, “Pygmalion’s Pedestal”
1973
Kathryn Lamboley, “Our Harbors Once Had Amber Waves of Grain”
1972
David Crowe, “Birdman of the Chippewa”
1971
Marjorie Bitker, “Westminster Scene of Salute to Law”
1970
Susan Smith, “They Put Wisconsin on the Map”
1969
Jill Weber Dean and Larry Servais, “The Flight of the Great Northwest”
1968
Mel Ellis, “Spring and Summer”
1967
Robert Wells, “The Colt”
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