Issue 7 is out now! Click here to order your copy of our first print issue. This will take  you to our submissions page, and you can choose to order issue 7. The list price is $12, and shipping is free within the United States.

Winner: Adrian Sobol for his poem “Dear America”
1st Runner-up: Jeffrey Haynes for his poem “Elegy for Pit Ponies”
2nd Runner-up: Esteban Mendez for his poem “I Can Be the Boss Daddy”
3rd Runner-up: RJ Ingram for his poem “Pontius Pilate Drinking Gin & Tonic”

Congratulations also to our talented semifinalists, listed in no particular order:
Carrie Lorig & Russ Woods for their poems “Roots Were Under” and “I Grew Up There as a Root Only”
Dillon J. Welch for his poem “E.L. James is Writing Me into Her Next Novel”
Robert Miltner for his poem “Eurydice Rising”
Michael Lambert for his poem “[I'm twenty-one years old & sitting bitch in my father's 1984 Ford F-150.]“
Emma Bolden for her poem “Let’s Talk About the Weather, That’d Probably Be Best”
Allie Marini Batts for her poem “Chronograph”
Alex Collins-Shotwell for her short story “His Tongue or Theirs”
D.E. Lee for his short story “The Face of the Little Wife”

We’re honored to have the chance to feature such fine work. Thanks to all who submitted!

Semifinalists are being contacted on a rolling basis; all semifinalists will be offered publication. We hope to announce the names of our four finalists in December, all of whom will receive publication and a contributor copy, and hopefully by Christmas we’ll announce the name of the winner, who will receive publication, two contributor copies, and a $100 cash prize.

Thanks again, and good luck to all contest entrants!

The Carson Prize is open to all writers in all genres. We’ll read work from established or emerging authors. We welcome submissions from writers of any nationality. As with our general submissions, we will judge entries on merit alone–all submissions should exclude names or any other identifying information.

This contest is free to enter–there is no reading fee whatsoever. We welcome entrants to submit up to five poems of any length or up to two prose pieces (8,000 words or less per piece). If you feel that your submission blurs the line between prose and poetry, select one of the categories and we assure you it will be passed on to the appropriate editors.

The author whose work is deemed most worthy of the Carson Prize will be awarded $100 and publication in the print issue, along with two contributor copies. Only one monetary award will be given, but three finalists will be published in the print issue and will receive one contributor copy, and all entries will be considered for publication in either the print issue or a future online issue. We do accept simultaneous submissions, but if your piece is accepted elsewhere, you must withdraw it immediately. This contest is only open to writing that has not been previously published.

The deadline for this contest is November 15, 2012.

To enter, visit our submissions manager and submit your piece under the Carson Prize category. We will not accept entries via email or post. This contest is fee-free, but we will have two options at the time of submission: you may enter with no fee at all, or you may choose to include a donation with your entry. Donations will in no way influence the judges’ decisions. Please ensure that your entry does not include your name or other identifying information at any point, even in the file name. We’ll know who you are when the time comes–we promise.

We are extremely grateful to the many generous donors who supported our campaign–we couldn’t pull this together without you!

Our dedicated readers know that we’re suckers for risks and experiments. Naturally, we get a lot of submissions where the experiment ultimately fails on some level, and on this basis we turn away many pieces, more than you’d think. We decided that for our next issue we’re going to right some wrongs. Mixed Fruit is pleased to announce the first ever B-Movie Edition, to be released on October 15.

We are challenging you to produce something truly bad for our next issue, and we mean “bad” in every sense of the word—interpret it as you will. Your submission(s) might utilize bad techniques as evidenced in films such as The Room, Crocodile, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, or to hit closer to home for you bookish folks out there, 50 Shades of Grey. On a more advanced level, we’re very open to well-done satires that only seem awful to those who don’t understand them–think Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” Or your work might be bad in that it is laughably vulgar, cliché, bawdry, mawkish, raunchy, overdone, or undercooked. You might send us something that’s been derided as cheesy, campy, or kitsch. Your submissions might not fit into any of these categories, and in that case, we still want to see them. No holds barred.

With The B-Movie Edition, Mixed Fruit hopes to give all you artistic rogues a platform to get nasty and reckless. If you’ve been sitting on a piece in fear that no one could possibly want it—now’s the time to give it the audience it deserves. But we challenge you to produce something with this issue in mind. It may be harder than you think.

It’s easy to write something very mediocre. But we think intentionally bad material has the potential to be particularly interesting and thought-provoking. What is bad work critiquing? What tropes are being satirized or responded to? What does the nature of “bad” material offer a publishing environment that affirms a pretty clear and consistent definition of what “good” work looks like?

The trick here is to send something that is intelligent enough to know how bad it is, yet still be interesting. But honestly, we don’t know how this little experiment is going to turn out. We’re equally afraid and excited to see how you will respond.

Without further ado, Mixed Fruit invites you to take place in the monumental literary event of this century by sending us your best “bad” pieces, whatever that means to you. One lucky contributor will be granted the Editor’s Choice Award. The prize for this award is Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, voice recognition software that allows you to dictate your next masterpiece while your computer types it up for you.  Three honorable mentions will receive their own prizes that are, we think, appropriate for a contest such as this.

We guarantee this issue is going to be one hell of a fun read.

To send us the best of your bad work, visit our submissions manager. All other categories will still be open at this time, so if you’re not interested in being a part of this issue, please feel free to keep sending us your best good work.