Recent honors and publications earned by our newsletter subscribers
Recent Honors
Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter won an honorable mention in the 38th Annual New Millennium Writings Awards for Poetry, for her poem "Lord of the Storm". Other Winning Writers subscribers receiving this award included Jacqueline Berger, Michelle Deatrick, Deborah DeNicola, Juley Harvey, Ruth Hill, Gunilla Theander Kester, David Lloyd, Jed Myers, Lucy Ricciardi, Jim Glenn Thatcher, Kari Wergeland, and Stephanie Zuperko. Their poems will be published in an upcoming issue. This biannual contest, with deadlines of June 17 (typically extended to July 31) and November 17 (January 31), gives prizes of $1,000 for poetry, fiction, and essays.
Congratulations to Ellen LaFleche, assistant judge of the Winning Writers North Street Book Prize. Her poem "Blessing for an Imminent Death" won the nationwide first prize in the 2014 Joe Gouveia OuterMost Poetry Contest. The award, with prizes up to $1,000 for the national and $200 for the Cape Cod regional winner, was sponsored by radio stations WOMR/WFMR and judged by Marge Piercy. The most recent deadline was December 15.
Congratulations to Mara Adamitz Scrupe. Her poetry collection Beast won the 2014 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Prize from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, an opportunity she found through Winning Writers. She kindly shares a sample poem here. This award includes $1,000, publication by the NFSPS Press, 50 copies, and a reading at the NFSPS Annual Convention in St. Petersburg, Florida, in June. The most recent submission period was August 1-October 15.
Congratulations to Carol Coven Grannick. Her middle-grade novel Reeni's Turn was a finalist in the 2014 Katherine Paterson Prize for YA and Children's Writing, and will be excerpted in the journal Hunger Mountain. The next deadline for this $1,000 award for unpublished stories and novel excerpts will be June 30. In other news, Carol's poem "This Is Your Azalea" was published in the Winter 2014 issue of Broad!, an online literary and arts journal for female, trans*, and genderqueer writers. Her essay "Side by Side" appeared in The Shine Journal. Her essay "ICU: The Seven and One-half Week Moment" appeared in You & Me, The World's Medical Magazine.
Congratulations to Allan M. Heller. His fifth nonfiction book, Graveyards of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, was published in October 2014 by Bygone Era Books.
Congratulations to Helene Pilibosian. Her fourth poetry collection, A New Orchid Myth, won honorable mention in the poetry category of the 2014 Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards. The next deadline for this contest, with prizes up to $8,000, will be April 1. She kindly shares a sample poem here. It was originally published in North American Review. In other news, her poem "After Women, Bird by Midnight" will be published in Crucible, the literary journal of Barton College.
Congratulations to Jude Bigley. Her poetry collection Labours was recently published by Thynks Publications Ltd.
Congratulations to Lois Guarino Hazel. Her essay "Scar: My Survivor Badge" won first prize for October 2014 in the StageofLife.com writing contest.
Congratulations to John Stokes. His poetry collection Fire in the Afternoon was published by Halstead Press, an Australian independent press specializing in history and heritage books, literature, current affairs, scholarly works, and general illustrated books. From the book jacket: "Celebrated poet John Stokes does not shy from the contentious and the harrowing. His verse evokes the plain truth about love, sex and chaos. In a clear, resonant voice Fire in the Afternoon catches the truth in the midst of the storm, his poems resonating from a life that has known love, joy, loss and solitude in nature." He kindly shares a sample poem here. In other news, his poetry was featured in Dazzled, the debut anthology of the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize. This A$15,000 award, which accepts international entries, is now open through May 29.
Recent Publications
Helen Leslie Sokolsky's poetry chapbook Two Sides of a Ticket (Finishing Line Press, 2014) was favorably reviewed at Seven CirclePress. "In these poems Sokolsky catches, with a painter's ability to render a moment in time, these scenes of passage and loss. In their containment she gives voice to a kind of sad transcendence, exploring the unity that binds us through the weight of our shared inconstancy, a state that stretches through our lives both personal and romantic, and extends itself even out into the animal and mineral kingdoms," wrote reviewer Seth Jani.
M.A. Hill's novel Trackless is now available on Amazon.com. From the book jacket: "Trackless tells of the power of dreams and destiny. Is what we want what we need? Can we choose our path in life? Set in Australia between the 1950s and 80s, this book evokes a poetic vision of the vast distances of the land and the dissolving polarities between the truth of reality and the mystery of illusion. Magic and myth interweave in this novel of betrayal and deceit." A book launch party will be held at 4 PM on February 22 at Kidogo Arthouse, Bather's Beach, Fremantle, Western Australia.
Cynthia Close's essay "An Ode to Eve Ensler" will be published in the February 2015 issue of the literary journal 34th Parallel. Her review of Michael Donaldson and Lisa A. Calif's Copyright and Clearance, 4th Edition was published in the January 7 online edition of Documentary Magazine, where she is a contributing editor. Cynthia says, "I'm an eager reader of Winning Writers newsletter...Thank you for publishing one of the best resources for writers."
Donna Clark Goodrich had five stories published in Penned from the Heart, an annual anthology of Christian devotional readings, edited by Gloria Clover at Son-Rise Publications.
Jackie Smith's poems "Ping Pong" and "A Letter to Grandpa" were published in the 2014 issue of The Chaffin Journal, the annual literary magazine of Eastern Kentucky University. She kindly shares the latter poem here.
Joan Leotta's first 10-minute play, "Pinpoint Wisdom", was staged in Boston during Valentine's Day weekend. The Channel/Dance Festival sponsored by the Fort Point Theatre Channel brought together ten of Boston's adventurous choreographers to collaborate with painters, photographers, playwrights, and other artists to create short movement works with imaginative and far-reaching visual and audio impact. Visit Joan's website to find out more. In other news, her flash fiction/prose poem "At the Farmstand" will be published in the 2015 edition of From the Depths, an anthology series from Haunted Waters Press.