ACC Writers Studio 2013 Literary Contest Winners
ACC Writers Studio is happy to announce the winners of its 2013 literary contest. First place winners receive $250, an invitation to attend our Writers Studio Literary Festival on April 13 where they will read from their winning work, and publication in next year’s art and literary journal, Progenitor. Second place winners are our guests at the Writers Studio Literary Festival.
Congratulations to the winners of the contest and our fine finalists. Many thanks to everyone who entered our 2013 Writers Studio Literary Contest. The judges were impressed by the quality of work in all categories.
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Fiction: Brian Kiteley, final fiction judge
Fiction 1st Place: Barbara and the Bear by Kathy Kaiser
The winner is Barbara and the Bear, a very simple story also about an animal and death. A woman with cancer finds a bear rooting about inside her small cabin in the woods. She bravely tries to shoo the bear away with a broom. When the bear finally leaves, in its own good time, she regrets not having touched his fur. Her cancer returns. The story is all of five pages long, and it still luxuriates in the feel of this fur not touched, in the longing for a sensation that her impending death should have allowed her to experience, and in the bear’s own remarkable grace and no-nonsense manner. There is a husband in the story, but the really tangible, rounded characters are Barbara and the bear, and both are deepened by the casual, unshowy imminence of Barbara’s death.
Kathy Kaiser is a writer and editor living in Boulder. As a journalist, she has worked for the (Boulder) Daily Camera, Boulder Weekly and the Rocky Mountain News. As a freelance editor she has worked on memoirs, fiction and academic books. She has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Colorado and has lived most of her life in Colorado, although she grew up in the Chicago suburbs. Currently she edits a magazine for seniors and writes a blog about her cabin in the Colorado mountains (http://cabinjournal.typepad.com), where she can be found year-round. She’s an avid hiker, meditator, reader and naturalist.
Fiction 2nd Place: Bobileau by Erika Christiansen
“Bobileau,” is a story of a cat and two male lovers. The cat inadvertently kills one of the lovers, tripping him so he falls down some stairs. The story is addressed to the cat, not the dead lover. The man who dies had wanted to die, because he had had a stroke and had cancer and he was going to die soon. He wanted his lover to help him end his life, but this stray cat intervenes. The speaker of the story is also considering suicide, but the cat convinces him that he “loves the world” still. “Bobileau” is an austerely simple and moving tale.
Erika Christiansen is the only current student member of letters in the National League of American Pen Women and has a poem coming out in Pen Woman Magazine. She has published poems and visual artwork in the literary magazine, Progenitor. She initiated, edited and wrote for The Communicator, the design newsletter that won the American Society of Interior Design’s national Student Media and Communication award in 2012. She loves writing poetry, fiction and non-fiction, as well as designing kitchens, baths and commercial spaces.
Fiction finalists:
Whitney Bontrager, The Boy with the Pomegranate Lips
Carrie Esposito, Bearing Witness at the Center
Petra Perkins, Close Encounters with Paul Theroux
Josh Sullivan, An Empty Beach;
Poetry: Marilyn Krysl, final poetry judge
Poetry 1st place: Doce Pequeños de Nicaragua by Rosemerry Trommer
Her clear, simple style and her confidence let the words speak for themselves.
Rosemerry Trommer ” is a chanteuse of the heart,” says poet Art Goodtimes. She has served two terms as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate and authored and edited thirteen books. Her work has been widely anthologized and has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, in O Magazine, on back alley fences, in her children’s lunchboxes, and on rocks she leaves around town. She leads poetry workshop and performs with the poetry troupe, EAR. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.
Poetry 2nd place: Polemic in Blue by Rosanne Sterne
Her attempt to imaginatively inhabit the painting is ambitious and thorough.
Rosanne Sterne is a poet, watercolorist, and flutist whose love of bright colors and musical lyricism finds its way into her poetic work. Rosanne’s poetry has been widely published in literary magazines, and her first book of poems, Dancing in the Gaps, was published in 2010 by Finishing Line Press. Rosanne is a graduate of Harvard University where she studied poetry with Alan Williamson. She was the recipient of Harvard’s David McCord Prize for creativity. When not creating, Rosanne is a Consultant to Foundations specializing in arts and culture. She lives in Littleton, Colorado with her family.
Poetry Finalists
Rosanne Sterne
Ricardo Bogaert-Alvarez, Wild Pigs, and Water for My Mind
Constance Boyle, what we leave behind, this round, another world, and the sounds of our night; Anita Jepson Gilbert, A Delicate Invasion
Vicki Mandell-King, A Charm of Hummingbirds, and A Plea For An Other Than Mind
Jack Martin, Murder
Sandra McGarry, Enough of Sea
Creative Nonfiction: Kate Hopper, final judge
Creative Nonfiction 1st place: Developed by Tiffany Hauck
Developed is a powerful coming-of-age story about the unexpected ways that we lose our innocence. I was immediately drawn in by Tiffany Hauck’s straightforward prose and her ability to turn a critical lens on that younger version of herself. This piece stayed with me long after I finished it.
Tiffany Hauck is a writer and a graduate of the Pacific University MFA program in writing .Her work has appeared in Hippocampus and Split Lip Magazine. She is also the Creative Nonfiction Editor at Spilt Infinitive<http://www.spiltinfinitive.com/>, an online literary magazine. Tiffany is currently shopping around her memoir, Rough Cut, about the 12 years she spent working in the Hollywood film industry. She resides in Denver with her husband and their two dogs.
Creative Nonfiction 2nd place: The Summer of the Bear by Mary Taylor Young
Mary Taylor Young’s prose is breathtaking, her voice full of quiet wonder as she catalogues the world around her. Her careful observations of the bear and the bluebirds will make any reader question the relationship between humans and the wilderness.
Award-winning nature writer Mary Taylor Young has written about the wildlife and landscape of the American West for more than 25 years. She is author of 14 books and hundreds of articles and was a 16-year nature columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. Mary’s current project is Rocky Mountain National Park: The First 100 Years.
Nonfiction finalists:
Lary Kleeman, Svidrigailov’s Eternity (Not)
Amy Olaechea, Spain
Sharon Owens, Part of the Crowd
Petra Perkins, Dramatic Entrance
The Rio Grande Gorges – John Christenson
View all from this user<http://accwritersstudio.submishmash.com/submissions/init?search=johnchristenson%40msn.com>
Kathryn Winograd
Kathryn Winograd M.F.A., Ph.D.
English Faculty\Writer’s Studio
School of Liberal Arts and Professional Programs
Arapahoe Community College
303 797 5815
kathryn.winograd<mailto:kathryn.winograd>
