Pushcart Prize Nominations from 2017

This is a historic moment for us. Word Fountain, the Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library began its history in 2009 and continued to expand outward from a local community of writers in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The original editors eventually moved off to various careers away from the Osterhout Library, so the magazine went on hiatus in 2014 and was handed over to a new group of editors at the end of 2015.

In June of 2016 we returned to print with writers from NEPA, and across the country, to around the world. We most recently published issue #14, Fall / Winter 2017, our fourth since the re-launch.

This is the first time in our history that we’ve made nominations to the “Pushcart Prize, Best of the Small Presses.” Each year little magazines and small presses are encouraged to nominate six works, across the spectrum of poetry, fiction, essays and literary hybrids.

We are proud of and grateful to all of our contributors, so of course, it’s hard to choose only six. Now that we’ve notified them, we are happy to share the news with you, our readers. These are the works from 2017 that we happily nominated for the Pushcart Prize:

From our Spring / Summer 2017 issue:

“Just Exactly Like,” by Philip Athans

“There Aren’t Any Ducks in the Duck Pond,” by Jonathan Greenhause

“American Water,” by David Chin

From our Fall / Winter 2017 issue:

“Love in the Desert,” by Lynn Hoggard

“The Year We All Got Cancer,” by Steve Deutsch

“Forget the Snail,” by Mary Panke

Thanks to each of you, along with all our contributors, for choosing to send your work to Word Fountain, the Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library.

To learn more about the Pushcart, please see the Pushcart Prize website.