Our 2011 Pushcart nominations

Last night, Robert, Sarah, Shayna and I met (on Skype) to choose our nominations from Versal 9 for the 37th Pushcart edition.

Ahead of the meeting, we asked our editorial team for their thoughts, and we received back enthusiastic lists -- which ultimately amounted to nearly our entire table of contents. In other words, we all still love it all.

Having never actually had a piece from Versal chosen for a Pushcart Prize, and not entirely sure what "will make it", our nomination procedure is based on the simple goal to choose a selection of work that we feel is representative of the Versal reach. Therefore, we feel, not only do these pieces each rock buckets individually, but taken together they more or less (and admittedly, probably less), span the range of the work you'll find in our pages.

Congratulations to our nominees:

The Miracle of Mrs. Evelyn Howard, Russell Helms
The Freight, Jane Lewty
Demonstrum, Nate Liederbach
Where the water comes from and gets together with its friends, Tony Mancus
Winter Song, Jill Osier
The Reindeer Daughter, Suzanne Warren

If the good folks at Pushcart choose any of these for publication in the 2012 anthology, we'll know in April.