Scoundrel Time

How to Become American

Watch Friends. Try saying “kʰẽə̃nt” instead of “kɑːnt”.  At dawn, draw a new Rangoli pattern on the threshold of your home in Old Hyderabad. Dry rice flour on damp terracotta tile, it...

FIVE AM ON THE DOT

During the nightshift at the supermarket, we have a forty-five-minute break, which we take whenever. We’re free to split it, to have a thirty-minute break, and save fifteen for when the store reopens, allowed...

Chat GPT Prompt for Great American Novel

I am going to describe the book I want you to write. If at any point in this chain of commands you get stuck, save your output and return to me the sentence in these instructions where you broke the book. I...

Theater of War

A small but important element of Russia’s attempt to rob Ukraine of its sovereignty is the theft of Ukrainian art. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on the coordinated Russian looting of thousands...

A Plea to Donald J. Trump from an Actual Witch Hunter

Dear Mr. Trump, On behalf of witch hunters the world over—and we do work on every continent but Antarctica, where we’re currently trying to establish a field office—I urge you to please stop referring to every...

What Was Sent

Letters and cards of sympathy come in first. They are sent by individuals, whole schools, churches, youth groups, Brownie troops, the town’s sister city in Estonia. They are thinking of the families, the...

News & Announcements

Congratulations! David L. Engelhardt’s essay, “A Thousand Times More Than a Thousand Times More: A Working Class Boy Surveys the Altitudes of American Money,” has been selected as a Notable essay in the new edition of Best American Essays, edited by Vivian Gornick and Robert Atwan.

 

Congratulations! Laura Jamison’s short story “Just Her Luck” has been selected for a Special Mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize anthology.

 

Congratulations! Thomas Rayfiel’s essay “Bookstore” has been selected as a “Notable” essay in the new edition of the Best American Essays anthology, edited by Alexander Chee.

 

We are excited to announce the Scoundrel Time Pushcart Prize nominees for 2023:
Works nominated by Scoundrel Time’s editors:

Poetry:
Snezana Zabic, “I Am an Elevator
Jenny Hykes Jiang, “We Followed the American Fleeing, Fled

Fiction:
The Escape by Seraph
Burger Revolution by Ranjan Adiga

Essay:
A Thousand Times More than a Thousand Times More: a Working-Class Boy Surveys the Altitudes of American Money”  by David L. Engelhardt
It’s Hard to Be Housed” by Elizabeth Robinson


Works nominated by Pushcart Prize contributing editors:
Banana Factory by Jon Fotch
Movie Night by Colette Parris

 

2022 Editors’ Choice Awards

We’re excited to announce our 5th annual Editors’ Choice Awards, just in time for our 5th anniversary. Each year, the editors of Scoundrel Time choose a favorite work that we published in the past year in each of three genres, poetry, fiction, and essay. This year, each winner receives $100.

This year’s winners are:

April Bernard, “Allen v Farrow” (poetry)
Jessie Van Eerden, “Blessing for the Lice Check” (essay)
Munawar Abbas, “Voyeurs” (fiction)

 

We are excited to announce the Scoundrel Time Pushcart Prize nominees for 2022:

Works nominated by Scoundrel Time’s editors:
Fiction:
“Bright” by Marilyn Abildskov
“Voyeurs” by Munawar Abbas
Poetry:
Jennifer Moxley: “One of Everything”
Essay:
“Bounded Functions” by Donald Quist

Works nominated by Pushcart Prize contributing editors:
“Algorithims” by Cindy Bosley
“Kill All the Bats” by Mohammed Sheeraz Dasti
“Just her Luck” by Laura Jamison

 

Congratulations!
Ken Massey’s essay, “Behind the Red Railing: My Childhood Isolation,” has been selected as a Notable essay in the new edition of Best American Essays, edited by Kathryn Schulz.

 

Scoundrel Time journal congratulates the following winners of our special award for pandemic art, Art Against Isolation. These 7 powerful works appeared in our series, “Scenes from the Pandemic.” Each winning artist receives $100.

Award Winners, Art Against Isolation:

Virginia Beards, “April 7, 2020” (poem)

Lori Barrett, “The View From Inside” (essay)

Robbie Gamble, “Barriers” (essay)

Nene Humphrey, “Pandemic Sound Scrolls” (visual art)

Timothy Liu, “Four Poems” (poems)

Azarin Sadegh, “The Lizard” (fiction)

Eleanor Windman, “Coping on the Upper West Side” (fiction)

 

 

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“In the increasingly convincing darkness / The words become palpable…" —John Ashbery

“Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.” —Grace Paley