Contest Alumni

Festival “Graduates”

Serious writers generally have to produce a million (or two million) words before they “graduate” and become acknowledged writers. Our contests have often been goals for aspiring writers to use as they worked on their projects. We are proud both of the Young at Art who are not yet recognized and those who have accumulated some credits.

Congratulations especially to:

• Rick Maloy’s newly edited Page Edwards Award winning story can now be read in the Fresh & Ripe section of Writecorner Press at www.writecorner.com.
• Kim Bradley (2005 winner) and Connie Davies (2006 winner) appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of Kalliope.
• Stephen Berry’s The Amber Room was published in 2003 by Ballantine and made it to the best–seller list of The New York Times.
• Lydia Filzen’s 1995 entry, Firetrail is due to be published in January 2004 by Wings e–Press as an e–book and a trade paperback. Her penname is Lydia Hawke.
• B. Powell Clark entered the Festival contest with one novel manuscript and had another, Forgiving Sam, published in 2003 by NewSouth Books.
• Brian Jay Corrigan has sold his award-wining (2001) novel, The Moon Under Water, to Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin’s Press. It should be out in late 2004 or early 2005.
• Robert Bailey, a private investigator himself, found a publisher for Private Heat, a PI novel that rings true to whar PIs actually do (and don't do).
• Larry Baker was a finalist with one novel, but forked lightning with A Flamingo Rising. After it was published, it was made into a motion picture.
• Sohrab Fracis has been invited to be an artist in residence for summer 2007 at the legendary artists’ community of Yaddo, in upstate NY.
• Gary Lawrence Edward's entry Tropical Storm saw print in 1995 (Northwest).
• Ruth Moon Kempher revised her manuscript later and later won a $1,000 prize in the Washington Fiction Award competition.
• Yvonne West’s Rosemary for Remembrance has been published by Fithian Press.
• Melody Bussey’s Crazy Cats finished in the top ten in 2000 and found a publisher within months.
• Donna-Lane Nelson’s entry, Vegetable Lover, Not a Cookbook, has been published by Five Star as Chickpea Lover, Not a Cookbook.
• Mark Rigney is still seeking a publisher for his novel manuscript, but he is now a published author with Deaf Side Story (Gallaudet University Press), a nonfiction account of a production of West Side Story jointly put on by MacMurray College and the Illinois School for the Deaf.