EYELANDS BOOK AWARDS 2019 – PRIZES

We are glad to announce the prize winners for Eyelands Book Awards 2019!!

EYELANDS BOOK AWARDS 2019 – PRIZES

POETRY
Unpublished: The trembling Tiber / Neal Hall
Published: The Nurseryman / Arthur Allen

MEMOIR – HISTORICAL FICTION
Unpublished: The Man Who Got Out of Japan / Sophie Neville / United Kingdom
Published: Secrets of a Mariachi Violinist-D.R. Ransdell

CHILDREN’S BOOKS/GRAPHIC NOVELS
Unpublished: There’s an Elephant in my Swimming pool – Gretchen Ryan / United Kingdom
Published: The Mystery of the Never-Ending Universe /Judith Brulo / United Kingdom

SHORT STORIES
Unpublished: A Brief History of Misanthropy by Dean Gessie / Canada
Published: Calls to Distant Places – Peter Jordan / United Kingdom

NOVELS
Unpublished:  Old scores – Robin Martin/ USA
Published: Fukushima Dreams – Zelda Rhiando/ United Kingdom

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GRAND PRIZE FOR PUBLISHED BOOKS
Neighbours and Tourists by Ewa Mazierska /United Kingdom (category: Short Stories)

GRAND PRIZE FOR UNPUBLISHED BOOKS
Florissant by P.H.C. Marchesi / USA (category: Children’s Books/Graphic Novels)

The book that won the Grand Prize for Unpublished Books will be translated in Greek and published in 2020 from Strange Days Books.
The winner of the Grand Prize for Published books wins a Five-day holiday in Athens between 21-25 of May 2020 where she will take her prize in a special ceremony.
Grand prize winners will be the judges for next year’s Eyelands Books Awards 2020 in their prize category.

Prize winners will receive via mail a special handmade ceramic designed especially for Eyelands Book Awards and a certification document for every prize.  Every prize winner is entitled to a 50% discount stipendium for our 3 Rock Writers’ Residency Program 2020 under the condition that they will send a proposal about a writing project by the end of March 2020.
Congratulations to all!!
Judges: Andriana Minou, Catherine McNamara, Gregory Papadoyiannis

SEE OUR PRIZE WINNERS

CATEGORY: POETRY /UNPUBLISHED

The trembling Tiber / Neal Hall
Dr. Hall is a trained eye physician and graduate of Cornell and Harvard Universities.  An acclaimed poet, he has performed poetry readings throughout the U.S. and internationally.  Dr. Hall is an award-winning author of six books of poetry.He is the winner of the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Best Poetry Book Award. Hall’s poetry speaks not just to the surface pain of injustice and inhumanity but deep into that pain, we label and package into genteel socio-political-economic-religious constructs to blur the common lines of cause, that is our shared story . The intellectual Cornel West said of Hall“[he] is a warrior of the spirit, a warrior of the mind, an activist, a poet. I sense Dr. Hall’s hypersensitivity to suffering – Martin, Malcolm and Jesus all had this hypersensitivity. His poetry has the capacity to change ordinary people’s philosophy on social and racial issues.” Hyderabad, India’s Vasanth Kannabiran, Chairperson, Asmita Resource Centre for Womenremarked: “This is poetry that scalds you into waking up to the possibility that you are perhaps one of those silent spectators. All in all he’s a poet. And unquestionably one of the most significant voices of the century.” www.nealhallpoet.com

 

CATEGORY: POETRY /PUBLISHED

The Nurseryman – Arthur Allen / Scotland

Arthur Allen is an award-winning British-Canadian poet. He has studied creative writing at the University of Oxford, the University of East Anglia and is currently reading towards a PhD in poetry and semiotics of grief at the University of Edinburgh. His debut pamphlet Here Birds Are was published by Green Bottle Press, 2017 and his verse-novel The Nurseryman is available from Kernpunkt Press, 2019. His poetry has previously appeared in many publications including: Cake, Ambit, fillingStation, the Amsterdam Quarterly, the Irish Literary Review, the Bombay Review and the Mississippi Review.

 

CATEGORY:MEMOIR–HISTORICALFICTION/ UNPUBLISHED

The Man Who Got Out of Japan / Sophie Neville / United Kingdom

Sophie Neville became inadvertently well known as a child when she starred as Titty in the 1974 movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’. Forty years later she was persuaded to write ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’. As President of The Arthur Ransome Society, shespoke on BBC Radio, television news and at literary festivals while writing articles and forwards for books. Sophie spent her twenties working in television production, when she scriptedher own programmesand worked on’Doctor Who’,’Eastenders’and ‘My Family and Other Animals’. She thenbrought out two humorous memoirs: ‘Ride the Wings of Morning’ and ‘Funnily Enough’, which won 3rd prize in the International Rubbery Book Award.A speaker for Bible Society,Sophie contributed to the 2018 anthology‘Merry Christmas Everyone’and has given talks in Southern Africa where she lived for twelve years while working freelance for the BBC Natural History Unit. In 2019, Sophie won an Eyelands’ Writers Retreat on Crete to develop an historical novel set on the island of Zanzibar. This isa sequel to her wartime romance, ‘The Man Who Got Out of Japan’,which is based on a true story of a Commonwealth Soldier she met in Kenya.

 

 CATEGORY:  MEMOIR–HISTORICAL FICTION/PUBLISHED

Secrets of a Mariachi Violinist / D.R. Ransdell /USA

D.R. Ransdell writes from Tucson, Arizona, where she enjoys good swimming weather most of the year. She writes contemporary novels featuring the Campanello sisters and a mystery series featuring mariachi violinist Andy Veracruz. Her musical memoir, Secrets of a Mariachi Violinist, recounts the challenge of learning to play folk music despite a lack of written music and a surplus of scheming colleagues. During the school season she teaches composition to second-language students at the University of Arizona and moonlights in a mariachi band. When vacation starts, she hits the road, leaving behind several mischievous cats. One of her favorite travel destinations is Greece, where she can devote afternoons to splendid beaches and evenings to bouzouki music. Please visit her at http://www.dr-ransdell.com.

 

CATEGORY:CHILDREN’S BOOKS/GRAPHIC NOVELS UNPUBLISHED

There’s an Elephant in my Swimming pool – Gretchen Ryan / United Kingdom
Born in South Africa, Gretchen Ryan grew up in a rural farming community. She spent a year at the Northwestern State University of Louisiana in the US on a tennis scholarship before returning to South Africa where she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Pretoria. Straight after university, she joined South African Airways as an air hostess. Ten years later she left the airline and went into the corporate world, culminating owning her own events company before settling in the UK. She currently lives between Surrey and Cape Town with her husband and two children. She obtained a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at Kingston University, London and speaks five languages at various levels of proficiency – her aptitude for accents hugely exceeding grammatical ability!

 

 CATEGORY: CHILDREN’S BOOKS/GRAPHIC   NOVELS PUBLISHED

The Mystery of the Never-Ending Universe /Judith Brulo / United Kingdom

Born in 1951. I grew up in Leicestershire, UK and after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music, London, I worked, for many years, as a professional violist and teacher. Now, l live in North Warwickshire with my husband, Alex. My love of writing came initially through the need to create material for my Early Years music groups. But, most significantly, the inspiration for my stories came from my beautiful grandchildren, Kaia and Taio Bryan. Some of my stories were inspired by the family cats I have known but it was in Cyprus, where I lived for six years, that I encountered the magnificent vultures which inspired my griffon vulture adventure stories.

 

CATEGORY: SHORT STORIES /UNPUBLISHED

A Brief History of Misanthropy – Dean Gessie / Canada
Dean Gessie is an author and poet who has won multiple international prizes. Dean won the Angelo Natoli Short Story Award in Australia and the Half and One Literary Prize in India. Dean also won the Bacopa Literary Review Short Story Competition in Florida, the Enizagam Poetry Contest in Oakland, California and the After Dinner Conversation Short Story Competition in Arizona. Elsewhere, Dean won the short story contest at the Eden Mills Writers Festival in Canada and he was selected for inclusion in The Sixty Four Best Poets of 2018 by Black Mountain Press in North Carolina. In addition, Dean won second prize (of 2000+ submissions) in the Short Story Project New Beginnings competition in New York and his short story made the shortlist (of 2800+ submissions) for the Alpine Fellowship Prize in Stockholm, Sweden. Dean’s prose and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies around the world. He has also published three novellas with Anaphora Literary Press in Texas. Tongo Eisen-Martin, shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and a California Book Award, described Gessie’s work as, “Genius with a pocketful of broken fetters.”

CATEGORY: SHORT STORIES /PUBLISHED

Calls to Distant Places – Peter Jordan / United Kingdom
Peter Jordan is a short story writer from Belfast. He has won the Bare Fiction prize, came second in the Fish, and was shortlisted for both the Bridport and the Bath short story prizes. His work has received various awards, including three Arts Council grants. Over 50 of his stories have appeared in literary magazines, journals and anthologies. His short story collection, Calls to distant places, was released in August 2019. He can be found on Twitter @pm_jordan. His website address is surfmyshorts.com

 

 

CATEGORY: NOVELS/UNPUBLISHED

Old scores – Robin Martin/ USA

Robin Luce Martin has received honors for stories and novel manuscript excerpts including the Tennessee Williams Festival Story Prize (judged by Richard Ford) and published in New Orleans Review,Dundee International Book Prize Shortlist, San Francisco PEN John Keats Soul Awakening Competitions, New Millennium, Adanna Adrienne Rich Tribute, Alabama Conclave, Faulkner Society, Del Sol First Novel Shortlist. “Exposure” was shortlisted in the 2015 Eyelands International Story Contest and published in the anthology, Borderline Stories. She is a recipient of a Norton Island Residency Fellowship, a Peripatetic Fellowship, and has won scholarships to Community of Writers Squaw Valley, Wesleyan Writers Conference, Aspen Summer Words, Key West Literary Festival, and others.  Most recently, “On the Street Where We Live,” a play co-written with Kelly Fordon, was published in Kenyon Review.Before writing, she worked as an actress, most visibly for two seasons on the television series Knots Landing. Her favorite theatrical experience was playing opposite Ed Harris in “Cowboy Mouth” by Sam Shepard & Patti Smith. She is the co-founder of #YeahYouWrite,  a monthly author reading series in NYC. From 2001-2018, She worked with the U.S. legal organization leading the struggle against torture. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Bruce McClure.

 

CATEGORY: NOVELS/PUBLISHED

Fukushima Dreams – Zelda Rhiando/ United Kingdom

Zelda Rhiando lives in South London with her husband, two daughters and four cats, and is one of the founders of the Brixton BookJam – the quarterly literary event that has hosted readings by established and emerging writers since 2012. She is the author of two novels, Caposcripti and Fukushima Dreams, and is currently working on a third. When not writing she can be found child-wrangling and making digital products. @badzelda | badzelda.com

 

 

 

 

 

GRAND PRIZE WINNER FOR UNPUBLISHED BOOKS

Florissant – P.H.C. Marchesi / USA

P.H.C. Marchesi is a college English professor specializing in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. She teaches at a liberal arts college an hour from Atlanta, GA. Her academic research into the role of trees and forests in Shakespeare’s plays led to her discovery of how precious and rare old-growth forests are, and inspired her to write Florissant.  Before embarking on the young adult fantasy genre, she wrote two science fiction novels for middle grade readers, Shelby & Shauna Kitt and the Dimensional Holes and Shelby & Shauna Kitt and the Alterax Buttons, both of which were self-published and won Children’s Literary Classics gold awards. Marchesi is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has also lived in Austria and England. In the United States, she has lived in New York, Delaware, Colorado, Arizona, and (now) Georgia.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER FOR PUBLISHED BOOKS

Neighbours and Tourists / Ewa Mazierska / United Kingdom

Ewa Mazierska is a historian of film and popular music, who writes short stories and creative nonfiction in her spare time. She published over forty of them in ‘The Fiction Pool’, ‘Literally Stories’, ‘Ragazine’, ‘ ‘BlazeVox’, ‘Red Fez’, ‘Away’, ‘The Bangalore Review’, ‘Shark Reef’, ‘Toasted Cheese’, ‘Queen Mob’s Teahouse’, ‘Verity La’ and ‘Mystery Tribune’, among others.  In 2019 she published her first collection of short stories, ‘Neighbours and Tourists’ (New York, Adelaide Books). Ewa is a Pushcart nominee and her stories were shortlisted in several competitions. She was born in Poland, but lives in Lancashire, UK.