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2007 NATIONAL CONTEST RESULTS
Fiction: "(Un/Re/I) Do" by Drew Lackovic
Poetry: "And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth" by Elton Glaser
Creative Nonfiction: "American Gray Space" by Andre Perry
Photography
All places and honorable mentions published in 2007 issue.
1st Place: "Barbershop Fire" by David Simonton
2nd Place: "Old Cat" by Robyn Johnson Ross
3rd Place: "Warhead #3" by Diane Bush
Honorable Mentions: Eileen Eckendorf, Ben Nixon, Amy Espie, Marty Harris, Ben Boblett, Michelle Proksell, Stphen Allen, Sia Aryai, Robert Guigrard, Tamara Raczynsky, John Martino, Brian Grossman, Kristie Langone
2007 SUZANNE TITO STUDENT PRIZE RESULTS
STUDENT FICTION WINNERS
1st place: “A Brief History” by Jessica Roth
2nd place: “(Stages of) White” by Jennifer Longworth
3rd place: “Heaven-sent” by Carl Cloyed
Honorable mention: “Negative Space” by Lydia Paar & “Passion” by Jessica Clements
From Fiction Judge Beth Alvarado : “[The winners this year] were representative of the range of stories in the overall pool, from conceptual or experimental to lyrical to more character driven or conventional. It took me quite a while to realize that what made these five stories keep floating to the top of my memory was the same quality that drew me to them on first reading. We’ll call it ‘voice’ for lack of a better description. Even though each story is absolutely different, the language in each was confident and compelling. It took the materials of our world and transformed them, crystallized them into something new, into art.”
Beth Alvarado is the author of the short story collection, Not a Matter of Love, which won the 2005 Many Voices Award from New Rivers Press and was published in 2006. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in many journals, most recently Ploughshares, Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry, and spork. She teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she received her MFA in fiction. With the poet Barbara Cully, she is the co-editor of two anthologies of contemporary literature, Writing as Revision and Entry Points. She is currently working on a collection of lyrical essays called Anthropologies and a trilogy of novellas, all of which are set in the desert.
STUDENT POETRY WINNERS
1st Place: “Transatlantic Telegram” by Iris Marble Cushing
2nd Place: “Diabetic Needle” by Erik Kinsey
3rd Place: “The Awkward and Ambiguous” by Alex Nerad
Honorable Mention: “You Taught Us Joyce” by Lydia Paar
Honorable Mention: “Orion’s Belt” by Jillian Marie Van Ness
From Poetry Judge Tony Hoagland: “I found a lot of heart and much fresh material among the poems. These poems reminded me that there are American stories which haven't been told yet (I found some of them here) and that it is our job as poets to tell them in ways that are accurate to both experience and art. What I mean is that poems must not just tell the truth, but also display the power of language to transform experience. Many of the entrants here transformed their subject matter through great verbal inventiveness and humor. Even at a funeral, language has to dance, in order to prove that life goes on.”
Tony Hoagland has published three prize-winning collections of poetry: Sweet Ruin, Donkey Gospel, and What Narcissism Means To Me, (2003). He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and elsewhere. He teaches in the graduate writing program of the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA program. Last year, Graywolf Press published Real Sofistikashun, a book of his essays on craft and poetry.
STUDENT CREATIVE NONFICTION WINNERS
1st Place: “The Cockroach Prayer” by Lydia Paar
2nd Place: “Work Ethic” by Sarah Monteiro
3rd Place: “The Children in the Barn” by Iris Marble Cushing
Honorable Mention: “I’m Cal Worthington” by Iris Marble Cushing
From Creative Nonfiction Judge Paula McClain: “Of the many strong essays I read for this competition, some deeply imaginative, compelling, emotionally acute, the three winning essays in particular had me riveted from their earliest sentences. Each of these writers has hit on something remarkable—writing that reveals hard truths that lie at the core of self without a trace of self-pity, -protection or –aggrandizement. The pieces trace the process of self-discovery, and become testaments to it.”
Paula McLain is the author of a memoir, Like Family (Little, Brown 2003), which details the fourteen years she and her two sisters spent in the foster care system in the 1970's and 80's after being abandoned by both parents. She's also an accomplished poet, with two published collections (Less of Her, 1999 and Stumble, Gorgeous, 2005), and has a debut novel, A Ticket to Ride, forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins. She’s received fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Ohio Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and teaches in the MFA program for poetry at New England College, and at John Carroll University.
STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHY WINNERS
1st place: Jake Nighswander, “With Guns”
2nd place: Catherine Ralls, “The Vineyard #4”
3rd place: Travis Patterson, “Sway of the Pyramid”
Honorable mention: Steven J. Chaprnka, “Model Behind the Sheet”
Honorable Mention: Michael Richards, “Progress”
From Photography Judge Robert Hirsch: “Photographs may serve a multitude of rationales. Although we are conditioned to expect that the function of a photograph is to provide a commentary about a subject, it is not necessary for a photograph to make an empirical statement or answer a specific question. A photograph does not have to be about something; rather it can simply be something uniquely itself. A photograph can be enigmatic or it might allow us access to something remarkable that could not otherwise be discovered or understood. It is analogous to what Isadora Duncan, the creator of modern dance, said: ‘If I could explain to you what I meant there would be no reason to dance.’ Keep on making and looking at pictures, but most importantly persist in questioning the answers that the pictures provide.”
Robert Hirsch is an artist, curator, educator, historian and author of Seizing the Light: A History of Photography; Exploring Color Photography: From the Darkroom to the Digital Studio published by McGraw-Hill and Photographic Possibilities: The Expressive Use of Ideas, Materials, and Processes published by Focal Press. His next book, Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, will be published by Elsevier’s Focal Press this Fall.Hirsch has been a contributing writer for Afterimage, Buffalo Spree, CEPA Journal, Contact Sheet, Digital Camera, exposure, The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, Fotophile, FY, History of Photography, The Photo Review, Photovision, and World Book Encyclopedia. Upcoming exhibitions are scheduled at the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at San Jose State University, Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Light Factory, The Southeast Museum of Photography and the Martin Museum of Art at Baylor University. His projects can be viewed at www.lightresearch.net.
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