The Passing of the Passage Prize

A two-time finalist's perspective.

I was recently awarded second place for Fiction in the third—and, for the time being, final—Passage Prize contest. I am certainly honored and I am grateful to Lomez and the editors and judges.

But, oddly, I was not surprised to win.

This is not meant to be boastful. I do not consider myself to be a great writer of fiction or poetry. I do think I’m improving, but there are many out there—many who entered this year’s contest, I suspect—that I consider to be better. I just had the feeling that the story I wrote would win. It’s the best thing I’ve written so far, and I’m glad I could be guided to produce it at the right place and the right time.

My Experience with the Passage Prize

I remember the excitement around the announcement of the inaugural prize. All of the guys in my writing group were talking about it. Most of us submitted something to as many categories as we could. I submitted to three that year: fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

My fiction entry was the first couple of chapters of a fantasy novel that I’ve been poking at for years. The rules that year allowed for novel excerpts, and I had it lying around, so I threw it into the ring. I was hopeful, but the ultimate rejection was not terribly surprising. Similarly, for poetry, I submitted a poem that I had written a while back in college. I thought it was pretty good, but Mr Yarvin considered it to be F-tier, which was the category for “I’m not sure what that is supposed to be.” (I may be misquoting.) Needless to say, that poem was not shortlisted. In hindsight, I don’t like it that much either, and it has not been published here on the Substack. My non-fiction submission was a piece of memoir from my time as a missionary in Ukraine for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was simply rejected. After reading the winning pieces, I could see why. Those stories are still in my folder; I am reworking them as autofiction that I hope sees the light of day in the future.

Despite my failure, I bought a copy of the hardback book containing the winning entries as well as editor’s picks. I’m a sucker for nice, limited-edition books. It was as advertised: a high-quality book full of top-tier creative output. You can read my reviews of some of the contents here.

For Passage Prize II, I submitted again. This time it was only for fiction and poetry. My fiction piece was a short work that came to me while listening to Philip Glass’ Orphee Suite for Piano. It might be best classified as a prose poem, but these days I think of “prose poem” as a contradiction of terms and I reject the label. So, prose it is. You can find that story, which was also not shortlisted, here.

However, my poetry submission, a sonnet, was selected as the third-place winner. I was somewhat surprised, but again I felt like it was going to win. I started composing the poem while driving my car at night from Utah to Washington. I love driving for long stretches in the West, and this is an ode to that sublime experience. In writing, I gave it my best, but I do feel that I was somewhat cynical in adapting it so heavily to that year’s prompt. You can read the poem here.

This year, I again submitted to the poetry and fiction contests. I did not hold out great hope for my poem, which was written as an exercise among a small group of Utah poets. I did put some good time and effort into it, but it was not my absolute best. However, I do think it captures the spirit of one of my favorite summers of post-college aimlessness. I published the full poem here.

I had worked on my winning short story for a while. I submitted an early version to the gentlemen at the Double Dealer magazine, but they turned it down as I had just been in their last issue. On the heels of my success with poetry in Passage Prize II, they had been good enough to solicit a story from me and were willing to print whatever I turned into them. That story—The Straight and the Crooked Path—was published in one of their early issues. Go buy it. I got some excellent feedback from PCM Christ about what I could improve in my story, I made some changes, and the rest is history. I hope to be able to share the story with you as soon as I am able.

The Future of the Passage Prize

To use a cliché to employ a cliché, my accomplishment this year is bittersweet. The announcement that the Passage Prize would no longer be continuing came at a terrible time: before the submission deadline had even passed, if I recall correctly. That felt like a betrayal, and it took a fair bit of wind out of my sails. I suspect I’m not alone in having that reaction. That news coupled with the complete silence from editors and judges throughout the process—in contrast to previous years—made it seem like the Prize was much more of a burden than a vehicle to identify and celebrate some the best creative endeavors out there.

I’m sad that the Passage Prize has ended, but I understand that the current iteration has been the victim of its own lopsided success. With more submissions every year, I imagine it was hard to hold on to enthusiasm during the judging and editing process.

I hope someone can resurrect the Passage Prize, or create something to replace it. Should someone be bold enough to attempt it, here are a few of my armchair-quarterback suggestions:

• Decouple the Prize and Publishing: Using the sale of the high-quality books to fund each following iteration of the prize is not a bad way to go. But when the winning pieces are only accessible in print, many months after the winners are announced, few people will ever see them. If he wants exposure, a writer would be better off sending his unpublished story to a small press or self publishing and begging his twitter friends to shill for him. Publishing the winning pieces online for free would be a good way to capitalize on the buzz around the announcement. This could cut into book sales, but I’m not convinced that the kind of people who will spend $300 dollars on a deluxe edition will be put off even if all of the winning pieces are available online for free. Or, probably better, don’t publish them at all. The ideal is for the Prize to not concern itself with income. But that is a big $$$ problem.

• Solicit nominations only for works that are already published: Many awards, like the Pulitzer, focus on works that have already gone through some amount of gatekeeping. A future Prize could take nominations, rather than submissions. Nominators would likely have to be limited to respected board members. Likewise, a list of acceptable publications would have to be worked out. There would be accusations of favoritism, but then again there already are. This would necessitate a larger (semi-permanent) board to handle nominations. It would be great if these people, and any other judges, could get some amount of compensation. I appreciate that this is also not a small $$$ problem. Another bonus: if the money problem could be solved, this approach would easily open the door for other categories such as novels and film.

• Publicity and outreach: Part of the publicity problem is the large gap between the announcement of the winners and the publication of their pieces. Maybe removing that gap would help with publicity all on its own; however, that’s only part of the problem. I have been consistently surprised and disappointed in the lack of interest in Passage Prize from a lot of big names in the sphere, particularly those interested in art and culture. It’s become a joke that people on the right love to complain about culture, but do nothing to support those trying to change it. Whoever picks up Passage Prize will need to make it a priority to find eyeballs and wallets. The vibe is better now than 4 years ago; it may be possible to make inroads with big outlets.

Just a few points to consider. I’d be happy to talk more about these and other ideas. I hope the Passage Prize does get picked up by someone willing to take on the challenges that have emerged. I think it has been a boon for many people, not just financially, but in stoking the embers of creativity that had been dormant in hundreds of artists, myself included.