Thank you for your wonderful submissions to the Jackson Hole Writers Conference Write to the Point contest. Our panels so enjoyed reading these stories and poems.
And the scholarship winners are:
Celest Havener for the fiction story – “The Red Koan”
Sidney Woods for the poem – “Volcanic”
Second place mentions:
Terry Martin for his fiction story – “Sanibel Blues”
Matt Daly for the poem – “The Waning”
Read the winning story and poem here.
A word with two of the panel judges
Ravi Shankar sat on our poetry panel this year and will join the conference faculty this summer. This is what he had to say about the winning poem:
“‘Thanks to poetry,’” Mexican writer Octavio Paz wrote, ‘language
reconquers its original state…its plastic and sonorous values.’ In
the winning poem “Volcanic,” the author uses a keen sense of sound
(from the alliterative “blood-pulsing/ bull elk fall serenade” to
“musk [that] stinks”), combined with a careful observation of the
natural world that retains its mystery and “easeful silence” while
surprising the reader with its ultimate movement.”
Catherine McKenzie served on our fiction panel and will also join conference faculty for the second time this year. She shares these congratulations:
“‘The Red Koan’ is exactly what I think flash fiction should be: a complete story in 600 words or less. Ms. Havener manages to convey character and a great sense of place in that confined space. Congratulations.”
