News and Events

Jehanne Dubrow Wins Several 2011 Awards

Jehanne Dubrow received a $6,000 Individual Artists' Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in May 2011. On May 9th, American Life in Poetry featured her poem "Chernobyl Year," as poem of the week. This is the opening poem in Jehanne's fourth book, Red Army Red, which is scheduled for release by Northwestern University Press in the autumn of 2012. In August, Jehanne became the Interim Director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. She continues to teach literature and creative writing at Washington College.

Jehanne's third book, Stateside, was winner of the 2011 Society of Midland Authors Award in Poetry and was also named a 2010 ForeWord Book of the Year Finalist in Poetry. In October, three of her prose poems from her manuscript-in-progress, The Arranged Marriage, won the top prize of the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for poetry on the Jewish experience.

Jehanne's recent publications include poems in Copper Nickel 16, The Southern Review, and Measure. Additional poems will appear in forthcoming issues of Meridian, New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, Southwest Review, Third Coast, and Zeek.

2012 Book Contest Deadline extended to January 31, 2012!

WWPH is taking submissions for both fiction and poetry until January 31. For more information, see our Become an Author page.

2011 Fiction and Poetry Winners Announced

WWPH is pleased to announce the winners of its 2011 fiction and poetry contest.

The Color of My Soul by Melanie S. Hatter won the fiction prize. Living in Southwest Virginia in 1993, Kira Franklin begins to question her own culture when she pursues a story on a local Cherokee community raising money to reclaim ancestral lands. The Harper family is part of a long line of Cherokee leaders, and their knowledge and devotion to retaining their history make Kira long for a sense of self. But the history she knows about her own family&151;that her father fought and died in Vietnam&151;gets turned on its head when her mother announces that her father is alive and very different from the person Kira had imagined.

Bloodcoal & Honey, a poetry collection by Dan Gutstein, won the poetry prize. This collection, divided into three equal parts, explores themes of murder, love, and illness in phrasing that will startle and engage a variety of readers. E. Ethelbert Miller describes the poetry in this collection as "almost a film noir moment on the page."

For more information on WWPH's annual fiction and poetry contests, visit our Become an Author page.

Latest Reviews of Our 2010 Books

2010 poetry winner Words We Might One Day Say by Holly Karapetkova was named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2010 by poet and blogger Grace Cavalieri.

2010 fiction winner Andrew Wingfield has received several positive reviews for his collection, Right of Way, including Washington City Paper, Precipitate, and Rain Taxi.

2010 Fiction and Poetry Winners Announced

WWPH is pleased to announce the winners of its 2010 fiction and poetry contests.

Right of Way, a short story collection by Andrew Wingfield, won the fiction prize and will be published on October 15, 2010. This collection takes place in Cleave Springs, a gentrifying neighborhood in the shadow of the nation’s capital. These insightful, humane, and beautifully crafted stories introduce us to the neighborhood’s dazzling variety of characters—long-time survivors and new arrivals, preservationists and visionaries, black people and white people—as they navigate the complexities of diversity and change, and strive to realize a comforting vision of home.

Words We Might One Day Say, a poetry collection by Holly Karapetkova, won the poetry prize and will also be published on October 15, 2010. The book ranges from prose poems to sonnets, using a variety of voices and experiences to portray love and loss, marriage and domesticity, parenting and motherhood. Many of the poems are inspired by folklore and myth, and many deal with the American author's encounters with her adopted Bulgarian culture. The first poem in the collection, “The Woman Who Wanted a Child,” introduces the book's themes by asking questions about the limits of motherhood, taking its cue from the mythological experience of metamorphosis.

For more information on WWPH's annual fiction and poetry contests, visit our Become an Author page.

David Taylor Nominated for Writer's Guild Award

"Soul of a People," the companion documentary to David Taylor's recent historical nonfiction book of the same title (Wiley, 2009), was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. "Soul of a People" explores the Federal Writer's Project, a Depression-era WPA program that employed a "who's who" of contemporary American writers, from pulp crime fiction writer Jim Thompson to Zora Neal Hurston of Harlem Renaissance fame. As Taylor writes, their efforts "made up America's first self-portrait" and "revealed the eccentricity, humor, brutality, and ingenuity" of its people.

Winners of the Writer's Guild Awards were presented on February 20, 2010 at ceremonies in both Los Angeles and New York. Watch the official promo video for "Soul of a People" :

For more information on the film, the book, or the WWPH author who started it all, visit davidataylor.com.

WWPH Hosts First Annual Writers' Ball

On October 17, 2009, WWPH hosted its first annual Writers' Ball. Poets, journalists, novelists, playwrights, speechwriters, essayists, short story writers and friends of writers gathered at Danzon Art Gallery in Adams Morgan to support and celebrate WWPH, which has published and promoted local writers for over 35 years.

WWPH would like to thank everyone who helped make its fundraising event a huge success! Special thanks to our sponsors: Diageo, Eatonville Restaurant, Busboys and Poets, Whole Foods, Occasions Caterers, and the Four Seasons Hotel.

For photos from this year's Ball, visit our Writers' Ball page.

News and Reviews

David Taylor has an article in the Spring 2010 issue of The Writer's Carousel, The Writer's Center's members-only newsletter. Taylor will also teach workshops there this summer, as well as in the fall when he will be joined by Ramona D.

Elisavietta Ritchie has poems in the online journals The Broadkill Review and Innisfree, as well as poems for upcoming publication in several anthologies.

Elisavietta Ritchie gave a reading of her poetry at Montgomery College, Rockville, MD on October 29. The same day, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, held a reading of Richie's "Awaiting Permission to Land" and "Raking the Snow" from an audio recording. Copies of the recording on CD are available for sale via WWPH.

Kim Roberts recently published four poems in the print journal Ocho's 23rd issue, guest edited by Grace Cavalieri. Roberts was also featured with one poem in a chapbook anthology titled The Lowly, Exalted, and Other Poems, published at the University of Southern Maine to accompany an exhibition at their Atrium Art Gallery entitled "Spineless Wonders: Invertebrates as Inspiration."

Kim Roberts also has poems in two new issues of online journals. Five poems from her "Imaginary Husband" Series appeared recently in No Tell Motel. Another poem, "Hearing Loss," appeared in Unsplendid. The poems can be accessed at notellmotel.org and unsplendid.com.

Barbara Lefcowitz has recently set up a website of selected poetry and prose. Her website can be accesssed at blefcowitzpoetry.com.

David Taylor's Success: Stories is a finalist for the 2009 Library of Virginia Literary Award in fiction. Awards are given to outstanding Virginia authors in the areas of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and are presented at the annual Virginia Literary Awards Celebration in Richmond, VA. For more information, visit lva.virginia.gov.

Elisavietta Ritchie's short story "Maybe It Was The Moths" appears in the new Gargoyle anthology, Gravity Dancers (Peabody Press, 2009). She also created and published Here, Even The Blue Crabs Compose, an anthology of 20+ poets in Anne Arundel and Calvert counties. Ritchie leads a workshop "Re-Create Your Life: creative memoir writing" every second Wednesday of the month at Calvert Library, Prince Frederick, and also serves as a poet-in-the-schools.

Brandel France de Bravo is editor of a forthcoming anthology called Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices (Shearsman, 2009). For more information on this title, visit shearsman.com.

David Taylor gave a talk at Fountain Books in Richmond, VA on July 5th about his new book, Soul of a People: The WPA's Writers' Project Uncovers Depression Era America (Wiley, 2009). The event was featured by CSPAN2's BookTV.