The North Carolina Writersí Network has announced the winners of its four spring literary awards as part of its continuing mission to foster the literary arts in the Tar Heel State.
Rocky Mount resident Pepper Capps Hill penned the winning essay for the 2011 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition. Hill, a museum educator at the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science, won $300 and publication in Southern Cultures for her essay, ěThereís No Crying in a Tobacco Field.î
ěThis essay took me into a world I barely knew ó a North Carolina tobacco field,î said author and final judge Jay Varner. ěHere is a piece wrestling with the hard lessons learned plucking leaves from the field and longterm medical concerns these former tobacco kids could face.î
Kristin Fitzpatrick of Alameda, Calif., won the 2011 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize for her short story, ěQueen City Playhouse.î Fitzpatrick, the 2009-2010 Writer-in-Residence at The Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, Ohio, received $1,000, and her story will be considered for publication in a forthcoming issue of The Thomas Wolfe Review.
Thomas Wolf of Chapel Hill won the 2011 Doris Betts Fiction Prize for his short story, ěBoundaries.î Wolf received a prize of $250, and his story will be published in the 2012 issue of the North Carolina Literary Review. This is Wolfís second Doris Betts Fiction Prize; he also won in 2007 with his short story, ěDistance.î
Author and longtime Charlotte Observer writer Dannye Romine Powell won the 2011 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition for her poem ěI Am the Girl.î Powell received $200, and her winning poem, selected from close to 100 entries, will be considered for publication in the literary journal The Crucible.
ěItís a poem strongly driven by voice and idea,î said final judge and poet Dan Albergotti. ěI love how this deceptively simple poem navigates what is actually highly complex at the level of syntax, temporality, perspective and emotion.î
The Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition is open to any writer who is a legal resident of North Carolina or a member of the Writersí Network.
The same is true for both the Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition (which honors the longtime Salisbury Post columnist) and the Doris Betts Fiction Prize (honoring the author and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita at UNC-Chapel Hill of the same name).
Two honorable mentions were awarded for the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, which honors the acclaimed novelist and North Carolina native and accepts submissions from writers regardless of geographic location: Lisa Gornick of New York, N.Y., for her short story, ěEleanor,î and Barbara Modrack of Brighton, Mich., for ěGone.î Joseph Cavanoís short story, ěThe Honey Wagon,î won second-place in the 2011 Doris Betts Fiction Prize, while the poem ěFrom Dry Seed Casingsî by Mary Jo Amani was named runner-up for the 2011 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition.
Prizes of $200 and $100 were awarded to the second- and third-place 2011 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition finisher, Davidson writer Cynthia Lewis, who collected both consolation prizes for her essays, ěThat Dress, That Hatî and ěSecret Sharing: Coming Out in Charleston.î
The nonprofit North Carolina Writersí Network is the stateís oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.