Subscriber News: April 2019
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Barbara de la Cuesta. Her collection of stories, The Place Where Judas Lost his Boots, won the 2019 Brighthorse Book Prize. This contest gives three prizes of $1,000 and publication for manuscripts of poetry, short fiction, and novels; the 2020 award is now open through August 16. Her novella, The Twenty and One Nights, will be published in an upcoming anthology from Running Wild Press.
Congratulations to Evelyn Krieger. Her essay "The Geometry of Grief" was a runner-up in the Wow! Women on Writing 2018 Q1 Essay Contest and was published on their website. See the current deadline schedule here.
Congratulations to Trent Busch. His poetry collection not one bit of this is your fault was published by Cyberwit.net in March and is available on Amazon. Read his winning poem from our 2016 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest here. Cyberwit.net is a small literary press in India that also publishes the Taj Mahal Review.
Congratulations to Mary K. O'Melveny. Her poem "Travels to the Valley of Lost Things" won the 2019 Slippery Elm Prize in Poetry. The most recent submission period for this $500 award was December 1-February 1. Slippery Elm is the literary journal of the University of Findlay (Ohio).
Congratulations to Gary Beck. His novel Flare Up was released in March by Wordcatcher Publishing. The protagonist of Flare Up is a young art dealer who is caught up in political unrest in London.
Congratulations to Sheila K. Barksdale and Patricia J. Machmiller. They were among the 11 top winners in the 2019 Haiku Calendar Competition from Snapshot Press. Winning Writers subscriber Roberta Beary was among the runners-up. Now available for pre-order, the 2020 desk calendar will feature 52 haiku by the 42 winners and runners-up. See sample poems on their website.
Congratulations to R. Bremner. His newest chapbook, Pencil Sketches, was recently published by Clare Songbirds Publishing House. The book is a collection of poetic vignettes about some famous, some not-so-famous people, including Norman Mailer, Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, Jim Morrison, Lyn Lifshin, Mariska "I'm your Venus" Veres, and others.
Recent Publications
Don Mitchell and Ruth Thompson were profiled in Eastern New Mexico News on March 13. The writer couple, who run Saddle Road Press in Hilo, HI, taught writing and photography classes in March as holders of the Jack Williamson Endowed Chairs in Science and Humanities at Eastern New Mexico University. Mitchell is an ecological anthropologist, writer, and photographer; Thompson is an award-winning poet who teaches writing and meditation. Her newest poetry collection, Whale Fall & Black Sage, came out in December 2018.
Sarah Kornfeld was interviewed at Independent Book Review by British literary critic and fiction writer Jack Messenger about her debut novel What Stella Sees (Cove International Publishers, 2018). In the accompanying book review, he says, "Sarah Kornfeld's writing is frequently surprising and audacious, with passages of sustained brilliance." Sarah is a founding member of the Blue Mind Collective studying the impact of the ocean on our lives and well-being. The novel is the coming-of-age story of a young woman artist with epilepsy who has visions of an underwater world during her seizures. Sarah says, "The research is astounding: we must have water to reboot our brains, get a 'blue mind' which is meditative and healing...I wanted to explore a young person's ocean genius, for most children have this insight about the power of water, but are told not to pay attention to that wisdom."
Paul C. Thornton's travel guide The Joy of Cruising is now available on Amazon. From the book blurb: "Thornton profiles travelers from all over the world with a passion for cruising and who act on that passion in creative and fascinating ways. From millennials to 90-something's; from a Grammy award winner, Poker Hall of Famer, winner of the TV series Last Comic Standing, cruise ship Godmother, to 'ordinary' cruisers doing extraordinary things, The Joy of Cruising will fascinate anyone who has ever cruised, aspires to take a cruise, or just loves travel." Paul won the Memoir category of our 2017 North Street Book Prize for White Man's Disease.
R.T. Castleberry's poem "The Geography of Decline" was published in The Pedestal Magazine.
Yvonne Chism-Peace's poem "The Life of Rally, 1951-1953" was published at Poets Reading the News. This persona poem in the voice of a sick child was inspired by recent news articles about the resurgence of deadly childhood diseases like measles and mumps because parents are opting out of vaccination.
Published: April 8, 2019
