The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry, and essays have been represented in the pages of our annual collections. This is the eighth consecutive year that LH Press was invited by the Pushcart Prize to make nominations.
This year, the press hasn’t published its journal Recovering the Self, which includes writings by many different authors in each issue. But LHP continued to publish inspiring and insightful literary and academic work by both new and regular authors at the press. Past nominees of the Pushcart Prize from Loving Healing Press include Don Bode, Larry Buege, Chris Stark, Nick Purdon, Tyler R. Tichelaar, Sweta Vikram, and Barbara Sinor.
The LHP nominees for the 2019 Pushcart Prize are:
- Leslie Askwith for the personal essay “A Geology Geek Finds God” (U.P. Reader, Vol. II)
- Katie McEachern for the short story “The Attack” (U.P. Reader, Vol. II)
- Sweta Srivastava Vikram for the book Louisiana Catch
- Holli Kenley for the book Daughters Betrayed by Their Mothers
- Niall “Jock” McLaren for the book Anxiety – The Inside Story: How Biological Psychiatry Got it Wrong
- Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd for the book AIDS Orphans Rising: What You Should Know and What You Can Do to Help Them Succeed, 2nd Ed.
“We’re very excited to put forward these nominees to one of the oldest and most prestigious awards for small presses. The Pushcart Prize is a unique opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of short-form writing, such as poems and personal essays. Many writers consider a nomination to be almost as great as being selected for the Pushcart annual edition,” says Victor R. Volkman, Publisher at the Loving Healing Press and Senior Editor of Modern History Press.
He tells that his criteria for the Pushcart Prize focus on the engaging potential of the content, involvement with subject matter, and spontaneity of literary expression.
“I try to have a balance between fiction and non-fiction and journal articles vs. full-length books to represent the spectrum of what we do at both LHP and its imprints Modern History Press and Future Psychiatry Press.”
Not all nominations, however, are equally easy or difficult to evaluate. This is true for the LHP nominations too.
“The U.P. Reader Vol. II was the hardest to choose just two stories from because every story in it is memorable and selected by a jury of editors,” says Victor Volkman. “I am extremely proud of Katie McEachern, a high school sophomore who took on a vivid fictional portrayal of PTSD in its teenage girl protagonist following a sexual assault.”
The author, Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd, is part of the Religious Teachers Filippini organization that helps children suffering from poverty and provides them with basic living resources like food, education, and health. So how have things changed for AIDS orphans in Africa since her first AIDS Orphans Rising book was published 10 years ago?
“My musings and insights arrived daily to help me adjust to my new environment and kept me from forming negative thoughts of depression or giving up that can take over when one is confined,” the author writes in the introduction to the book.
