2010 Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards

Entries are now being accepted for the 2010 Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards. The award is named for Carrie Allen McCray, one of the founding members of The South Carolina Writers Workshop. The competition is open to anyone attending the SCWW Annual Conference in October.

Categories for the competition are Novel - First Chapter, Short Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry. Please check our guidelines for complete submitting information.

Prizes will be awarded for each category.
First Place - $200
Second Place - $100
Honorable Mention - Certificate

If you have any questions, contact Kim Blum-Hyclak (rhyclak@comporium.net).

Judges

Nonfiction

Claudia Smith Brinson is a senior lecturer at Columbia College, where she directs the Writing for Print and Digital Media track in the Languages and Literatures Division. Previously she worked as a journalist for newspapers in Florida, Greece, and South Carolina. While working for The State, she won twice the Knight Ridder Award for Excellence, that former newspaper chain's highest writing award, and along with her colleagues was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Hurricane Hugo coverage. She won more than three dozen state, regional, and national awards for her journalism. She also has published essays and short fiction nationally and won an O. Henry for her short story, "Einsteins' Daughter."

Jackie Cooper is a film critic whose movie reviews appear on his personal website www.jackiecooper.com as well as several others such as rottentomatoes.com and huffingtonpost.com. His reviews also run in an assortment of newspapers in Georgia. In addition he is a featured guest on radio and TV shows across the South.

Cooper is also the author of five books, the latest being The Sunrise Remembers which was published in September 2008. His next book, Back to the Garden will be published in the fall of 2011.

He was one of the founding members of the Southeastern Film Critics Association and is also a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. Cooper can be reached at jkershawcooper@aol.com.

John Kachuba's latest book is Ghosthunters: On the Trail of Mediums, Dowsers, Spirit Seekers and Other Investigators of America's Paranormal World, published in 2007 by New Page Books. He is also the author of Ghosthunting in Illinois and Ghosthunting in Ohio, How to Write Funny and Why is this Job Killing Me? (co-authored with his wife, Mary A. Newman PhD)

John's short fiction and nonfiction have been widely published in such publications as: Tin House, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Connecticut Review, Dogwood, Savannah Literary Review, Antioch Review, Poets & Writers, America's Civil War, Cincinnati Magazine, American Profile and many others. He has received several awards for his fiction, including the 2004 Dogwood Fiction Prize.

He holds a degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University (Yellow Springs, OH) and Ohio University. He has taught writing at both University of Cincinnati and Ohio University. He is also on the faculty of the Gotham Writers Workshop.

Poetry

Susan Meyers is the author of Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press, 2006), which received the inaugural South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, the SIBA Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her chapbook, Lessons in Leaving won the Persephone Press Book Award. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, and jubilat, as well as the online sites Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A long-time writing instructor, Meyers has an MFA from Queens University in Charlotte. Her blog is at http://susanmeyers.blogspot.com

Sandra Redding has published three books, including a recent memoir, Greensboro & Me: Dancing Through the Decades, Alabaster Press. Additionally she has over 25 short stories, more than 30 poems, and numerous book reviews and feature articles in print. Currently she writes a column for the News & Record in Greensboro, teaches Memoir Writing workshops, and conducts LifeVerse sessions for the Greensboro Public Library. Her work will be included in three 2010 anthologies: Literary Trails of Piedmont North Carolina, NC Arts Council; Imagining Heaven, Hospice; and Poets Over 70, Tower Poetry Society, Ontario.

P. Ivan Young teaches creative writing and poetry at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. He is a native of Columbia, South Carolina, and lived there until the age of 32. He received a B.S in Zoology from Clemson University and an M.F.A in Poetry from University of South Carolina, where he studied with James Dickey. His work has been published in The London Magazine, North American Review, Cream City Review, Cider Press Review, Fourteen Hills Review, and the Comstock Review, among others. His chapbook, A Shape in the Waves, was a winner of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative's 2008 Chapbook competition.

Novel - First Chapter

Scott Eagan is the agent at Greyhaus Literary Agency. Opened in 2003, Greyhaus has focused exclusively on the romance and women's fiction genres. Scott draws on his two MA degrees in Creative Writing and Literary as well as his undergraduate work in literature and writing to provide hands on assistance to his writers.

Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times Bestselling novelist. She has six novels with Penguin/NAL (Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks, Between the Tides, The Art of Keeping Secrets, and Driftwood Summer).

Patti has been hailed as a fresh new voice in southern fiction. She has been short-listed for the Townsend Prize for Fiction and has been nominated for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Fiction Novel of the Year. She is a frequent speaker at luncheons, book clubs and women's groups where she discusses the importance of storytelling and anything else they want to talk about.

Kathy Rhodes is Founder and Senior Writer/Editor at TurnStyle Writng, Editing & Publishing. She is Publisher/Editor of Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal (www.asouthernjournal.com). Rhodes is the author of Pink Butterbeans: Stories from the Heart of a Southern Woman and co-editor of Gathering: Writers of Williamson County. Her essay "An Open Letter" was published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 3 and singled out for a review in The New Yorker. She is a member of the Nashville Writers Alliance, a board member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance, and Past-President of the Williamson County Council for the Written Word.

Short Fiction

Mary Kratt is a two-time winner of the Blumenthal Writers and Readers Series sponsored by the NC Writers Network, she won the Fortner Writer-in-Community Award from St. Andrew’s College in 1994. In 2000, her book, Small Potatoes, won the Brockman/Campbell Book Award for poetry and Spirit Going Barefoot won the Oscar Arnold Young Award in 1982. She has seventeen published books of poetry, history, and biography.

Her books include The Only Thing I Fear Is A Cow And A Drunken Man (Carolina Wren Press), Spirit Going Barefoot (Briarpatch Press), On The Steep Side (Briarpatch Press), Small Potatoes (St. Andrew’s College Press) and Valley (Sow’s Ear Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Shenandoah, Tar River Poetry, Stone Country, New Mexico Humanities Review, Greensboro Review, Nimrod, Yankee and others. Mary Kratt was a 1996 North Carolina Arts Council fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and has written numerous books about Charlotte, including New South Women: Twentieth Century Women of Charlotte, North Carolina and Charlotte: Spirit of the New South. She has also written two walking tours of uptown Charlotte.

Richard Krawiec received the 2009 Excellence in Teaching Award, UNC-Chapel Hill Friday Center for Beginning and Intermediate Fiction Writing courses he designed and teaches. His first novel, Time Sharing, was published by Viking Press and featured in Publisher's Weekly Recommended List, and Village Voice "Real Life Rock Top Ten" column. His second novel, Faith in What?, received good reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. His third novel, Almost Murder, is scheduled for publication in 2010. His biography, Yao Ming: Gentle Giant, was awarded one of the top 40 books of the year by the Pennsylvania Librarians Association and a chapter purchased by Florida for the use in their language arts curriculum.

His poetry book, Breakdown, was a finalist for the 2009 Indy Book Awards for Poetry. His short stories, award winning poetry, and plays have appeared in numerous commercial and literary publications.

He has taught writing to people in homeless shelters, housing projects, women's centers and prisons, including Death Row.

Dr. Rob Merritt is Professor of English and Chair of Division of Language, Literature, and Communications at Bluefield College (Virginia). B.A. and M.A. in English, University of North Carolina, Ph.D., English, University of Kentucky. He is the author of Ezra Pound and the Aesthetics of Early Music and Landscape Architects (poetry). He writes poems about the healing power of landscape and language and has published poetry in a number of journals. He is the editor of The Nantahala Review. As Vice-President for Conferences of the National Association for Poetry Therapy, he is interested in educating people about the healing powers of writing. He is currently working on situating major authors within the context of poetry therapy and personal and cultural healing.