Hearty congrats to Lighthouse's Colorado Book Award winners, including Nancy Sharp (Both Sides Now, Creative Nonfiction), Christopher Merkner (The Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic, Short Story Collection), and beloved late Lit Fest instructor Jake Adam York (Abide, Poetry)!
THE RONA JAFFE FOUNDATION AWARD
Applause, felicitations, compliments, and praise to former Lighthouse staffer, current workshoper and instructor, and haunter of the attic Amanda Rea for winning a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Foundation Award. Amanda is one of six writers singled out for their exellence. Congrats Amanda!
LIGHTHOUSE FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
It's Awards Season here at Lighthouse. Huge congrats to our Alice Maxine Bowie Fellow Cynthia Wong; our Beacon Award winner Ben Whitmer; and the recipients of the Fort Lyon Writer-in-Residence John Cotter, Anthony D'Aries, and Chauna Craig.
BOOK NEWS
Seth Brady Tucker's second book, We Deserve the Gods We Ask For, has won the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His short story "The Mountain Man's Relativity Theory" (which was an honorable mention for the Jeff Sharlet Prize from The Iowa Review) was chosen as a Special Mention in the fiction category for the 2015 Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Gail Waldstein's poetry book The Hauntings won first in Swan Scythe Press contest 2014, published 2015. It's available through Small Press Distributors, Amazon, and Tattered Cover. Ryan Warner of Colorado Matters interviewed her regarding this book and her writing life in early April (link to stream). Her short fiction, "Penumbra," appeared online in Bluestem, 2014 and will be reprinted in Kaleidoscope, 2015.
Gerry Wilson's short-story collection Crosscurrents and Other Stories is forthcoming in the fall from Press 53, an independent press in North Carolina. Thanks to two Lighthouse workshops—Antonya Nelson's story workshop at Lit Fest 2014 and Andrea Dupree's online fiction course, fall 2014—for fabulous feedback that made three of these stories so much stronger.
Gail Storey's book trailer for I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail is featured along with an interview with her on the site Animoto, the program she used to make the trailer.
Robert Garner McBrearty's first novel, The Western Lonesome Society, will be released by Conundrum Press in September. Robert also recently gave a reading from his short stories at the North American Review Bicentennial Writing Conference.
JL Fields second book, Vegan Pressure Cooking: Beans, Grains, and One-Pot Meals in Minutes was released by Fair Winds Press in January 2015. JL recently completed a six-month book tour with nearly 40 events and over 1,200 people in attendance.
Elizabeth A. Roberts' memoir, Glimpses… Now I Can See, was published by Abbott Press and tells the story of the author’s loss of sight and her search for vision.
AWARDS & RECOGNITIONS
Kristin Leclaire's essay, "Inside the Labyrinth," made The Masters Review shortlist. A big thank you to Kathryn Eastburn's and Michael Henry's memoir workshops for getting this essay into shape and for "drafting" it last December. The Bellingham Review has also chosen the essay as a finalist for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her nonfiction piece "Anatomy of a Mother" is now live on Literary Mama.
Rebecca Snow was awarded the Robert and Daryl Davis Fellowship in Poetry for the 2015 Seaside Writers Conference. See her blog about it along with more info about the following events on her website. She was on the "I Want to Be a Debut Writer" author panel at Lit Fest on June 15th, and she will be reading with poet Michael Levell at Printed Page Bookshop on Wed., June 24th at 7:00 PM. She wishes to thank Mike Henry, Andrea Dupree, and all her instructors at Lighthouse!
Young Writers Program instructor Jesaka Long placed as a semi-finalist with her TV pilot script INKLINGS in the inaugural SeriesFest Storytellers Initiative. SeriesFest is an international celebration dedicated to showcasing the best new pilots from established and emerging content creators. Its goal is to be the “Sundance of television.”
Leah Rogin-Roper's "Two Truths and a Lie" won Horse Less Press's Poetry and a Pint chapbook series. It will be published in August through Horse Less Press.
Ellen Nordberg's story "The Ambivalent Mother" won the 2015 Colorado Authors' League Award for Essays. She wishes to thank Laura Pritchett and Lisa Ray Turner for their essay writing workshops!
Tim Dunbar was recently awarded second place in The Fiction Desk's Newcomer Prize 2015 for his first short story, "David Bowie." Tim's story will appear in their next anthology, due late spring.
Joey Porcelli's article on Cuba, written for Colorado Expression magazine, is a finalist in the Colorado Authors' League's annual writing competition. Awards were given at the organization's banquet on May 8th.
Patricia Anne Jackson has been offered a fellowship by Summer Literary Seminars to attend a writing conference in Lithuania. Fellowship awards are based on competitive fiction and creative nonfiction submission.
Ana Sofia Martinez, 8th grader at Euclid Middle School and former Lighthouse student, was awarded first place in state in the Junior Group Performance category at National History Day Colorado for her skit "Pulitzer Takes the World: The Revolution of the Printing Press Industry." She will go to the national contest at the University of Maryland in June.
We Deserve the Gods We Ask For by Seth Brady Tucker and Contenders by Erica Krouse were both featured among the Advisory Editors' Book Recommendions in the Summer 2015 Edition of Ploughshares.
Seth Brady Tucker's second book, We Deserve the Gods We Ask For, has won the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Seth was also selected to be the "Poet of the Month" at the New School in NY, and three new poems and an essay on the immorality of eating appears in their magazine, The Inquisitive Eater. Seth Brady Tucker's short story, which first appeared in the Iowa Review, has been selected as a Special Mention in the 2015 Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Rebecca Snow's novel, Glassmusic, was shortlisted for the 2015 International Rubery Book Award. She would like to thank Cort McMeel, her writing group The Seven Samurai, Lighthouse, and Conundrum Press.
Andrea Doray published an opinion piece in The Denver Post on July 4, "To be free, we also have to be brave." Her weekly column in Colorado Community Media newspapers was awarded a First Place distinction by the Colorado Press Association last year. Andrea is also an instructor in Lighthouse's Young Writers Program.
Taylor Bratches has been nominated as a longlisted finalist for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her poem "Resonate" will appear in an online longlist anthology along with the works of other selected finalists. The final winner is expected to be announced by December 2015.
Patricia Anne Jackson's novella, Upside Down, has been chosen as a semi-finalist in The 2015 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.
Mike Nugent was a semi-finalist in the recently concluded James Jones First Novel Fellowship 2015 (meaning top 30 of 623 submissions). He owes it all to Erika Krouse and his fellow BPers.
Quinn Rennerfeldt Fairchild is currently one of nine finalists for the Peseroff Poetry Prize, held by Breakwater Review, an online literary magazine run by graduate students at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
PUBLISHED WORKS
Jenny Shank's satire of the chain fondue restaurant experience, "At This Fondue Restaurant, the Word is Romance," appeared in The Rumpus. She has also been blogging for Barnes & Noble Reads about such topics as "7 Great Reads by Mexican American Authors for Cinco de Mayo," "Yum, Crunch, Yuck: 6 Famous Foods in Literature," and "How to Prioritize That Looming Stack of Books on Your Bedside Table."
Lighthouse staff member Kate Barrett’s short story “Fishes and Loaves” will be published in the fall issue of From the Depths. Thanks to Alexander Lumans and everyone in the Advanced Short Story workshop for their invaluable edits!
Amanda McCracken’s article "Are We Entitled to Sex?" was published in Al Jazeera America on May 16th.
Robert Garner McBrearty's flash fictions will appear in Posit and FlashFiction.net.
Lyn Wheaton’s story "The Flat Tire" was published on page 8 in the print and online versions of the Valley Voice Magazine May 2015 Edition.
Michele Johnson's creative nonfiction piece "Empires" will appear in the anthology Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America in December. Michele drafted the piece in John Cotter's awesome online "Breaking Out—Trying On Transformational Forms" course this spring. Thanks to John and classmates for the inspiration!
Jennie MacDonald is pleased to announce publication of her essay "The Transtextuality of James M. Cain’s Snyder-Gray Novels: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and The Cocktail Waitress" in New Perspectives on Detective Fiction: Mystery Magnified from the Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature series.
Claudia Putnam has had several pubs/acceptances in the past few months: Literary Mama, The Writing Disorder, I-70 Review, Glassworks, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Sage Green Journal, Gulf Stream, and Green Hills Literary Lantern. She's also had a residency at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
Candace Kearns Read is happy to announce that her essay "It's All Relative," revised and refined in workshops with Shari Caudron and Richard Froude, has been published this week by The Manifest-Station. Thanks to all who supported this piece.
Lighthouse Instructor Karen Palmer has an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress up at The Manifest-Station.
Lighthouse member Sam DeLeo's short story "A Fire for Help" is forthcoming for publication in the London-based magazine Talking Soup. He would like to thank the instructors at Lighthouse, especially Steve Almond, Amanda Rea, Emily Sinclair, and Andrea Dupree.
Erin Trampler Bell's short story "As We Know It" will be published in the Summer 2015 "This May Be The Last Time" issue of Exterminating Angel Press's online publication, EAP: The Magazine. Erin has contributed other short stories to previous issues of the magazine over the last two years. This issue comes out on July 1.
Lois Levinson's poem "Flocked" was published in the June 2015 edition of Clementine Poetry Journal. She thanks John Brehm for his sage advice and constant encouragement.
Julie Vick's satire piece "Toddler Discipline Made Easy" appeared on McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
Michele Finn Johnson's piece of hybrid fiction, “Lunar Facts,” was published by Necessary Fiction. Michele would like to thank Jessica Roeder and her fellow online Hybrid Forms classmates for their inspiration and feedback.
Mary Harpin's poem "In the Ocean I See a Box Jelly" is published in the June issue of Terrain.org.
An excerpt from Benjamin Dancer's A Tale of Shame and Grace was published in The Copperfield Review.
Kristin Leclaire's personal essay, "Acclimating," will appear in The Bohemyth this September. A big thank you to Lisa Ray Turner's workshop for getting this piece into shape.
Jenny Shank's short story "La Sexycana" appeared in the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal.
Cara Lopez Lee's flash nonfiction piece “Tiny Destroyer of Worlds" has been published in Pangyrus, a Boston-based literary journal. It's the story of a nine-year-old pyromaniac (yes, that would be Cara) on the night she first discovers the thrilling power to destroy.
Long-time Lighthouse Writers Workshop member Sydney Solis has her poems “Fisherman,” “St. Croix,” and “Little Piece of Paradise” published in The Caribbean Writer - Volume 29 (2015).