2012 Pushcart Prize Ranking — Fiction

Note: this post originally appeared on November 10, 2011 on the old Perpetual Folly site.

It is that time of year again. My copy of the 2012 Pushcart Prize Anthology arrived in the mail yesterday and I have been updating the rankings. I will start with the list for Fiction. The updated Non-fiction list is here.

I feel compelled every year to offer a disclaimer for the list. I originally created it in order to aid my own efforts at targeting my submissions of short stories to literary magazines. I used the Pushcart Prize because I felt that it represented the broadest range of magazines among the annual prizes (including Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Awards).

My method is straightforward. I use a ten-year rolling database and award points to magazines for the prizes awarded and fewer points for each special mention. I don’t go further back than ten years because it seems to me that what is relevant is the current success of the magazines, not their storied past. Also, the further back we go, the more defunct magazines we find, and that’s not terribly helpful. Some have argued that a five-year period should be chosen instead. That seems too small a sample. When only 19 or 20 prizes are awarded in fiction each year, I think ten years provides a clearer picture of a magazine’s success.

Some people don’t like rankings at all, and I understand that. This ranking, however, is as objective as I can make it. The Pushcart Prize itself is subjective, of course, but that’s an entirely different question.

A note on symbols. I have marked magazines that I believe to have ceased publication with ©. Several magazines have a (?) by their name which means I can’t find a website for them. Please leave any corrections in the comments.

What is notable about this year’s list? Here are some observations:

• Ploughshares maintains a sizable lead
• Tin House moves into 2nd place, jumping over Conjunctions and Zoetrope, which are tied for 3rd
• Georgia Review, on top of the charts for non-fiction, climbs 5 spots to #6, and Paris Review falls into a tie for 9th with the defunct Ontario Review, while Epoch drops out of the top ten.
• Both One Story and A Public Space make big moves up on the back of a double win for each (matched by Georgia Review)

So, here is the list:

Pushcart Prize Ranking (Fiction) for 2012