Katherine Van Dis Awarded Spring 2013 Orlando Short Fiction Prize
KATHERINE VAN DIS lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband and three-year-old son. She is a high school creative writing teacher and has also worked with writers in community centers and prisons. Though Katherine has lived in North Carolina for more than ten years, her roots are in Michigan, where many of her stories take place. She attended the University of Michigan where she received a Hopwood Award for fiction. She is...
Bridgett Jensen Awarded Spring 2013 Orlando Creative Nonfiction Prize
BRIDGETT JENSEN lives in southern Illinois with her husband and their four children. She is a graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Writing Program. She teaches poetry and creative writing to children and has published work in The Louisville Review. Bridgett’s winning essay, “Lift,” was published in Issue No. 14 of the Los Angeles Review.
Diane Gilliam 6th Gift of Freedom Winner, Poetry
Diane Gilliam tells women’s urgent stories in poetry that is both stunning and accessible. Her recent work illuminates her interest in the interactive role myths, fairy tales, and other received stories play in how we become who we mean to be. Gilliam describes the Gift of Freedom grant as “actual, practical help for women who need to do their work in a world that often doesn’t know how much it needs that work, and...
ire’ne lara silva 6th Gift of Freedom Genre Finalist, Fiction
Fiction Genre Finalist Ire’ne Lara Silva’s work speaks for those on the margins. Her fierce, primal voice stands at the intersection of poetry and prose, and is concerned with the question of transformation: how do you find the way through pain, grief, and loss on an individual and communal level? She writes of her Gift of Freedom creative project plan: I’m working on two creative projects: my first novel, NACI, and a second short...
Florencia Ramirez, 6th Gift of Freedom Genre Finalist, Creative Nonfiction
Creative Nonfiction Genre Finalist Florencia Ramirez’ proposed creative project, Eat Less Water, is an environmental anthem for our time backed by a strong literary voice. Her writing is an estuary where the different rivers of her personality and experience converge. The salt water of her public policy training at the University of Chicago, the fresh water of her creative writing instruction, the brackish water of the activist, and...
An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson
About An Unquenchable Thirst “Readers…will find themselves transported into another world by this powerful, revealing memoir. An aspirant to the Missionaries of Charity at age 19, the author spent 20 years living a life both extraordinarily simple and heart-wrenchingly complex. Johnson skillfully demonstrates this juxtaposition through her writing—mundane events, such as gathering eggs or learning to play the piano, often have...
“The Smell of Other People’s Houses,” by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
In 9th grade my boyfriend was Jason Johanson. His father was a dentist and a hunting guide in the Bush. They built a new house on Campbell Lake where they could park their float plane and we could snow machine all the way down Campbell creek in the winter. The whole house was made of fresh cut cedar. All of Jason’s clothes smelled like cedar, and it made me sneeze when I got close to him, but I got close anyway. To this day,...
“Surfing,” by Flynn Berry
“He’s missing.” I am not sure why I said that. It is not even entirely true—he’s not missing in the way mountain climbers, or soldiers, or kidnap victims can be missing. He’s just out of contact. If we made enough phone calls, we might be able to find him. I look up from my plate. We are sitting outside at a restaurant in Bridgehampton. There are a few other tables of diners out of earshot, and a large tree above us. A warm maritime...
Tracy K. Smith, 2013 To the Lighthouse Finalist Judge
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith is the Finalist Judge for the 2013 To the Lighthouse Poetry Publication Prize. About Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Pize winning collection, Life on Mars, Jessica Piazza, 2012 TTL recipient, says: “I’m most affected by “The Speed of Belief,” which is the long elegy poem that makes up a section in Life on Mars. That poem is for her father, and I love to watch the poem move through...
Evie Shockley, 2012 To the Lighthouse Finalist Judge
Poet Evie Shockley is the 2012 To the Lighthouse Poetry Publication Prize finalist judge. Update to Post: See Evie’s selected winner, Leia Penina Wilson.
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