The Davidson County Writers’ Guild is sponsoring its annual Larry E. Watson Memorial Adult Writing Contest.
The contest runs April 1-June 30 and is open to writers 18 and older. Categories are prose and poetry. Entries must not be previously published.
Each entry should include a cover sheet, typed, with title, name, address and telephone number. The body should be typed on regular-sized paper and double-spaced. Submit three copies; if you wish manuscript to be returned, include self-addressed, stamped envelope with sufficient postage, without sufficient postage, no return.
In the prose category, the entry may be fiction or non-fiction (specify on cover sheet), a maximum of 1,500 words.
Poems must be a maximum of 32 lines.
For poetry, fiction and non-fiction, first place prize is $50; second, $25; third, $10.
Winners will be recognized at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Writers’ Guild and should plan to read their winning entries at the meeting.
Submit entries to: Grady R. Anderson, 6 South Payne St., Lexington NC 27292. Call 336-249-8724 or e-mail beckygrady@lexcominc.net.
Carolyn Hart in Charlotte today
Carolyn Hart will sign copies of her new book at Park Road Books in Charlotte today at 2 p.m.
“The reigning monarch of the amateur sleuth mystery” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) is back with the next entry in her popular Death on Demand series, “Death Walked In,” published by William Morrow.
The book is the eighteenth in Carolyn Hart’s series featuring bookstore owner Annie Darling. Hart has been hailed as America’s modern day answer to Agatha Christie.
Ron Rash an award finalist
CULLOWHEE ó Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Culture at Western Carolina University, has been named one of four finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the largest peer-juried prize for fiction in the United States, for his compilation of short stories, “Chemistry and Other Stories.”
The award winner and four finalists were announced recently after contest judges reviewed almost 350 novels and short story collections written by American authors and published during 2007. Winner Kate Christensen, author of the novel, “The Great Man,” will receive a $15,000 prize, while Rash and the other three finalists receive $5,000 each. All five authors will be honored in a ceremony on Saturday, May 10, at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
In announcing Rash as a finalist, contest judges called him “a pre-eminent chronicler of Appalachia in fiction and poetry” and said the narratives in his short story collection “span the 20th century from perspectives as authentic as they are unexpected.” The stories, they said, “depict a wide range of characters ó a logger, waitress and carnival knife-thrower among them ó in voices both stark and lyrical of characters young and old.”
The PEN/Faulkner honor is the second major award that Rash has garnered for his short story collection, published last year by Picador. The collection also was named one of 15 “notable books” of 2007 by The Story Prize committee. The Story Prize is presented annually to recognize the author of a book-length work of short fiction judged as the nation’s best.
Rash’s most recent novel, “The World Made Straight,” earned him the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for 2006 and was named one of the nation’s top 10 books for teenage readers by the Young Adult Library Services Association. His earlier prize-winning novels include “Saints at the River” and “One Foot in Eden.”
Rash’s next novel, “Serena,” will be published in September by Harper-Collins Press.