Subscriber News: February 2023
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Valerie Nieman. Her latest novel, In the Lonely Backwater, received the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, the highest award for fiction by a North Carolina writer. Launched in 1953, this award series from the Historical Book Club counts among its winners such notable authors as Reynolds Price, Lee Smith, Charles Frazier, and National Book Award winner Jason Mott. A Southern crime novel and coming-of-age story, In the Lonely Backwater follows a teen girl from a troubled family who may hold the key to solving her cousin's murder.
Congratulations to Angela Cleland. Her third poetry collection, Real Cute Danger, was recently published by Broken Sleep Books in the UK. This book explores childbirth and parenthood through the lens of horror and science fiction.
Congratulations to Cathy Davis. Her essay "Card for Sale" won an honorable mention in the Nonfiction Essay or Article category of the 2022 Writer's Digest Writing Competition. The 92nd annual contest is open now, with a grand prize of $5,000 and a deadline of June 5. Enter before May 5 for a discounted fee.
Congratulations to Marvin J. Lurie. His poem "over the wintry" won first prize in the Golden Shovel category of the Oregon Poetry Association's 2022 Fall Poetry Contest and will be included in their 2023 Verseweavers anthology. The golden shovel is a form created by Terrance Hayes, which takes a quote from another poem and uses each word to end a line of the new poem. Read the winners on their website. The 2023 Spring Poetry Contest, with prizes up to $125, is now open through March 1.
Congratulations to F.J. Bergmann. She won Best Poet in the 25th annual Critters Readers Poll from Critters Writers' Workshop.
Congratulations to D.K. Coutant. Her mystery novel, Evil Alice and the Borzoi, will be published March 6 by Wild Rose Press and is available for pre-order. She thanks the Winning Writers critique service for helping her get her manuscript ready for publication. This murder mystery set in Hilo, Hawaii is the first in a planned series starring amateur sleuth Cleo Cooper.
Recent Publications
Winning Writers assistant judge Dare Williams's poem "In My Dreams I am Carried Inside" was published in December in Frontier Poetry. Dare is one of our new screeners for the 2023 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.
Winning Writers judge Michal 'MJ' Jones wrote a column for the "Writers Recommend" feature at Poets & Writers in February, about listening to music as inspiration for your writing.
Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter was the featured poet on Samantha Terrell's blog for the week of January 27. The post included two poems from Jendi's latest book, Made Man (Little Red Tree, 2022).
Joan Gelfand's essay "My Family Tree Has Split Ends" was published in the anthology Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Wild, Wacky Family. Her poem "Hanami" appeared in The Wax Paper. Courtship of Winds published her poems "Branded" and "Everything in its Place".
Ellaraine Lockie's poems "The Cloud According to the Wife" and "The After Anniversary" were published in Monterey Poetry Review (Spring 2023). They are selected from a suite of poems about her husband's suicide.
The Poet Spiel's story collection It Could Happen to You is available for $16 from his imprint Madman Ink. Email spielspeak.tt@gmail.com to order a copy. The book collects 18 of his linked stories about the senior residents of Honeysuckle Veins Trailer Park. His poem "Stella" was published at A Story in 100 Words.
Jessica Pegis was interviewed in U.S. Catholic about her novel The God Painter (Stone Table Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock, 2021). The God Painter dramatizes the theological conflicts that occur when androgynous aliens rescue humanity from a dying Earth. Pegis says in the interview, "Taking the plot away from our Earth allows us to test some of religion's claims about universals... Quite frankly, in religion, there's too much certainty and not enough unsettledness." On the symbolism of the aliens' gender, Pegis says, "Many Christians seem to think the only way to achieve the blending of the masculine and feminine is through heterosexual marriage. But this is a limited way of looking at what the blending of masculine and feminine means. The potential to be both is a divine stamp on every human person."
Published: February 11, 2023
