SHORT STORIES/ PUBLISHED
Townsend Walker / 3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies / USA
Townsend Walker draws inspiration from cemeteries, foreign places, violence and strong women. A collection of short stories, 3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies was published by Deeds Publishing in 2018. Winner of a Book Excellence Award, an Eyelands Award, and a Pinnacle Award. A novella, La Ronde was published by Truth Serum Press in 2015. Some seventy-five short stories have been published in literary journals and included in ten anthologies. Short Story Awards: two nominations for the PEN/O.Henry Award, first place in the SLO NightWriters contest. Four stories were performed at the New Short Fiction Series in Hollywood. He is currently developing a screenplay based on La Ronde and a novel of linked stories based on the original collage works of the artist Beverly Mills.
UNPUBLISHED
Ruth Brandt / No One Has Any Intention of Building a Wall/ United Kingdom
Ruth Brandt is delighted to win the Unpublished Short Story Collection Award in the Eyelands Book Awards. Her short stories and flash fiction have appeared in anthologies and magazines, including the Bridport Prize 2018, Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual, Into the Void, Neon, Litro and The London Reader. She has had a play performed at Theatre 503 and her poetry published in the Irish Literary Review and Bunbury Magazine. She won the Kingston University MFA Creative Writing Prize 2017 and has been nominated for the Best Small Fictions Award 2019, Pushcart Prize 2016 and Write Well Award 2016. She teaches at Surrey Adult Learning and West Dean College, and is Writer in Residence at the Surrey Wildlife Trust.
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POETRY /PUBLISHED
Amy Pence / [It] Incandescent / Ninebark/ USA
Amy Pence authored the poetry collections Armor, Amour (Ninebark Press), The Decadent Lovely (Main Street Rag), and the chapbook Skin’s Dark Night (2River Press). Her hybrid book on Emily Dickinson— [It] Incandescent – was released by Ninebark in 2018. A new chapbook of poems, Your Posthumous Dress: Remnants from the Alexander McQueen Collection is forthcoming from dancing girls press in the Fall of 2019. In addition to poetry, Pence has published short fiction in publications such as Western Humanities Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly and online at The Red Fez. Her reviews of books and interviews with writers have appeared on The Rumpus and in Poets & Writers and The Writer’s Chronicle. She works as the Humanities tutor at Pace Academy in Atlanta, teaches a poetry writing class at Emory University, and lives in Pine Lake, Georgia. Links to her work can be found at www.amypence.com.
UNPUBLISHED
Jeffrey Kingman / Beyond that hill I gather /USA|
Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California. He is the winner of the 2012 Revolution House Flash Fiction Contest, the winner of the Red Berry Editions 2015 Broadside Contest, a finalist in the 2015 Blue Light Press Chapbook Competition, a finalist in the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk Prize poetry book competition, and he received honorable mention in the 2017 Quercus Review Press Fall Poetry Book Award. He has been published in PANK, Crack the Spine, Squaw Valley Review, and others. Jeff has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and can be heard banging his drums in a band called O Happy Dagger.
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NOVELS / PUBLISHED
Ashley Lloyd Smith/ Pizza with Jimbob & Twoforks / Liquorice Fish Books/ United Kingdom
Ashley’s background is in theatre; writing, directing and acting. He is a Drama graduate of Aberystwyth University and post graduate of the University of Surrey. His plays have been performed on three continents. His poetry and short stories have been published in a number of anthologies. He started writing his first published novel, Pizza with Jimbob & Twoforks, whilst on a romantic Valentine’s weekend staying in a Tipi; about a man who murders his wife, regrets it and searches for salvation. His second novel, How I earned my Midpoint bumper sticker, takeson the growing waves of anti-feminist propaganda through the friendship of a promiscuous Canadian stand-up comedienne and an English stay-at-home husband, on a road trip through America.
UNPUBLISHED
Gita Theodora Simic/ Occam’s Razor / Bosnia-Herzegovina
I grew up in the Balkans (early lessons in the ways of life), and lived in Canada for thirty years (continuation of early lessons) with my husband who is an art historian, a piano teacher, and a HIP music enthusiast. Lately we spend a good part of the year close to the Adriatic Sea, in southern Herzegovina (the sea holds no memories but for the rocky cliffs, the morning mist and clear waters of turquoise blue). I was born on the small and wondrous island of Korcula in Croatia, and later moved to Belgrade, Serbia. Both countries denied me citizenship after the break-up of Yugoslavia. My background is in philosophy and IT. I had studied philosophy and history at the Belgrade University before moving to Canada, where I obtained a diploma in computer programming/systems analysis, with specialization in mid-range computers.
I am a systems analyst by day (for almost twenty-five years), historical fiction writer by night(for several years). When a friend asked why I write historical fiction, I said: “Wouldn’t you, if you had to spend eight hours a day in a cubicle?” The literary world does not resound with my name.To date, I have completed nine such short stories, a play, and this novel. I am currently working on my second historical fiction novel, loosely based on the life of Sir Francis Drake and the fate of Raphael’s cartoons. Occam’s Razor, a story of Bernini, was also shortlisted at the 2017 CHAUCER BOOK AWARDS Historical Fiction pre-1750s.
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GRAND PRIZE PUBLISHED
Catherine McNamara/ The Cartography of Others / Unbound/ Australia/Italy
Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris, and ended up in West Africa running a bar. Her collection Pelt and Other Stories was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award and was semifinalist in the Hudson Prize, and her short stories have been Pushcart nominated, shortlisted and published in the UK, Europe, USA and Australia. Catherine lives in Italy.
GRAND PRIZE UNPUBLISHED
Michael Robinson Morris / For Entertainment Purposes Only / USA
Eyelands Book Awards 