We’ll have our new issue up in an hour or so, but first we wanted to extend a quick congratulations to three of JDP’s finest. Founder Eirik Gumeny put back on his editorial hat to nominate three of the best stories from 2011 for the annual Million Writers Award sponsored by storySouth. The nominees are:

“Mammy’d Give Me Minds to Eat” by Graham Tugwell
“Jolly Roger” by Michael Sions
“Julia and Raul” by Ben Nardolilli

But what about that story you loved that didn’t get nominated? Fear not: the competition allows readers to nominate a single story by going here.

So if there’s something that got overlooked (hey, Eirik only had three choices) show a JDP writer some love by voting for another story from 2011. Just make sure it was published during the last calendar year and that you follow storySouth’s rules in voting.

The contest is only taking nominations through April 9th, so get to it!

And congratulations again to Graham, Michael, and Ben. Huzzah!