Announcing the Annual Prize and Inaugural Award Event

	Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto

The Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto Short Fiction Prize is sponsored by the family of Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto in her memory to honor her devotion to the art of writing fiction, to expand the audience for outstanding short stories, and to encourage literary excellence among writers early in their careers. 

$2,000 will be awarded annually to the best work of short fiction published by Blackbird in a given calendar year, with a particular emphasis on work by an emerging or previously unpublished writer.

No application form or fee is required; all short fiction submitted to the journal is eligible.

The inaugural prize-winning story will be selected from short fiction published by Blackbird in 2011 and will be announced in the fall 2011 issue. A gala award ceremony, open to the public and featuring a reading by the prize-winner, will be held in March of 2012 on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto was born September 21, 1945 in Richmond, Virginia. She died in October of 2007 after being struck in a pedestrian crosswalk in Carmel by the Sea, California. Her sustained interest in writing led to her fiction being published in a number of literary journals as well as winning several competitions, including the 1996 and 2000 Short Fiction contests sponsored by Richmond Magazine. She was a graduate of St. Gertrude’s High School in Richmond and of Virginia Commonwealth University (class of 1967), and in 1971 she received an MA in English from the University of Michigan. 

While funding for the prize itself comes from an endowment established at VCU by her husband, David Tarumoto, the Department of English welcomes contributions in support of the inaugural celebration event as well as the outreach activities of the Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto Prize, which will include visits by the winning writers with high school and elementary students at Richmond area schools. Anyone wishing to make a donation is invited to visit the secure online contributions page: http://givenow.vcu.edu/RMTarumoto