This is the list of Eyelands book awards 2020 finalists*. Prizes to be announced on December 30th, 2020
POETRY PUBLISHED
Weight of the ripened – Gina Ferrara /USA
Gina Ferrara lives and writes in New Orleans. She has four poetry collections: Ethereal Avalanche (Trembling Pillow Press, 2009), Amber Porch Light (Word Tech Communications, 2013), Fitting the Sixth Finger (Kelsay Books, 2017) and Weight of the Ripened (Dos Madres Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, The Poetry Ireland Review and Tar River Poetry. Most recently, her work was selected for publication in the Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2019 by Black Mountain Press. Since 2007, she has curated The Poetry Buffet, a monthly reading series in New Orleans. She is an Assistant Professor of English and writing at Delgado Community College.
Goodbye toothless house – Kelly Fordon /USA
Kelly Fordon is the author of a novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind (Wayne State University Press, 2015), a Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was a finalist for the 2020 Eric Hoffer Award in poetry. A short story collection, I Have the Answer, (WSUP, April 2020) is a Top Kirkus Indie Summer Read for 2020. www.kellyfordon.com.
Fingertip of the tongue- Sarah Rice /Australia
Sarah Rice is a Canberra-based poet and visual artist. Her full-length collection Fingertip of the Tongue (UWAP 2017) was shortlisted in the ACT Publishing Awards, and her limited-edition, art-book of poetry Those Who Travel (prints by Patsy Payne, Ampersand Duck 2010), is held in the National Gallery of Australia and other institutions. Most recently Sarah launched her art-poetry chapbook Care-Stop (Recent Work Press, 2020). Sarah won the inaugural Ron Pretty Poetry Award, the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize, and co-won the International Writing Ventures, and Gwen Harwood Poetry Prizes. She placed second in the Val Vallis Awards. Sarah was shortlisted in the Montreal, Bridport, Tom Howard, Drake-Brockman, CJ Dennis, New Millennium, Fish, Axel Clark, Michael Thwaites, and Overland poetry awards, amongst others. Publications include the Global Poetry Anthology, Award Winning Australian Writing, Best Australian Poetry, Island, Overland, Southerly, Cicerone, Aesthetica, Cordite, The New Guard, ABR, and Australian Poetry Journal. She is regularly commissioned to write ekphrastic poetry in response to visual art and crafts, as well as academic research papers such as for Text Journal’s special issue on ‘Creativity’, and on ‘The Line’ for Axon Journal. Sarah was a finalist for the Red Room Poetry Fellowship in 2019 and 2020.
Dust Blown side of the journey – Eleonore Schönmaier /Canada
Canadian writer Eleonore Schönmaier’s new collection Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete is forthcoming in 2021 from McGill-Queen’s University Press. Greek composer Michalis Paraskakis is weaving selected poems from the collection into the music-theatre multimedia work Field Guide for 1 piano, 2 pianists, electronics and video. Wavelengths of Your Song (MQUP, 2013) was published in German translation in 2020 by parasitenpresse (Cologne). Schönmaier is also the author of Dust Blown Side of the Journey (MQUP, 2017) and Treading Fast Rivers (MQUP, 1999). Greek, Dutch, Scottish, American and Canadian composers have set her poems to music including Carmen Braden and Emily Doolittle. She has won the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize (second place) and the 2019 National Broadsheet Contest among others. Her poetry has been included in the League of Canadian Poets and the Academy of American Poets Poem in Your Pocket Day Brochure, and has been widely anthologized including in Best Canadian Poetry. Born and raised in a remote settlement in the northern Canadian wilderness she now divides her time between Atlantic Canada and coastal Europe. She is currently studying music with the Greek composer and pianist Panos Gklistis. eleonoreschonmaier.com
Rewriting Stella – Dan Tuttle /USA
Dan Tuttle: Dan prizes whimsy, abhors boredom, and has a middling relationship with focus. This combination led to Rewriting Stella. That, and a damn long drive to the Serengeti.His sonnet obsession began as a gift-giving exercise. After a rather pleasant dinner one night he decided to write up the occasion in oddly formal poetry, offer shout-outs to each participant, and email it to them. None replied. Thrilled by market demand, he then made a habit of memorializing occasions in iambic pentameter. The power of the stories we tell ourselves and all that. Eventually Stella matured and those stories began to make sense.At one point Dan could speak Spanish, Swahili, Chinese, Melanesian Pijin, and conversational English. At one point he could also do calculus. But what is life but a departure from points once thought important? If you ask Dan, he’ll gladly tell you about that time helped prevent an outbreak of the bubonic plague in East Africa, how he used to be able to read a Chinese newspaper, and how he’s mildly synesthetic. But only for a story in return.
POETRY UNPUBLISHED
Hummingbird from Heaven – Keti Bozukova /Bulgaria
Keti Bozukova was born in Sliven, Bulgaria. She graduated from the School of mathematics in her hometown and continued her education at the Faculty of Law at Sofia University “St. Climent Ohridski”. She has worked as a prosecutor, as an inspector at the Ministry of Justice, and as a lawyer. Keti Bozukova is also the Chief Secretary of the Union of Jurists in Bulgaria and an active participant in the activity of the cultural house at the Union of Jurists in Bulgaria. She has organized spring and autumn salons of arts for the works of lawyer-poets, novelists, painters. Keti Bozukova has published poems and stories in magazines and newspapers in Bulgaria. Her works have also been published in Russia, Ukraine, Northern Macedonia, Serbia, France, Great Britain and China. She is a member of the Union of Bulgarian writers. She has won many writing and poetry awards in Bulgaria, as well as abroad. She took part in the 4th EU-China International Literary Festival in Beijing in 2019. To this day Keti Bozukova has published 19 poetic books and one in prose.
Crows at Sunset – Terry Watada / Canada
Terry Watada is a poet published in Canada. “Crows at Sunset” is his sixth collection and is entirely new. Poetry for him captures perfectly the vicissitudes and joys of life. He tries to approach poetry with a Buddhist sensibility. In the end, he hopes his words give comfort and inspiration to his readers. His fifth collection, “The Four Sufferings” (Mawenzi House Books, Toronto) was just published in 2020.
Lessons from the Greeks – Gail Sidonie Šobat /Canada
Gail Sidonie Sobat is a poet, a singer, and the author of 11 books. She is the creator/coordinator of YouthWrite®, camps for kids who love to write…just about anything!©, and an instructor in the communications programs at MacEwan University and in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. Gail has presented across Canada, including Canada’s North; Doha, Qatar; Hanoi, Vietnam; Bern, Switzerland; Helsinki, Finland; Istanbul, Turkey; and more recently at the Northeastern Modern Language Association in Baltimore, Maryland. She’s been writer-in-residence in several Canadian schools, at Queen’s University, in Doha, Qatar, at the University of Alberta through the Canadian Authors Association, for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Public Libraries, and for NorthWords in Yellowknife, NWT. Her work is published in academic and literary journals, anthologies, and has been broadcast on radio and performed on stage. Gail is a Global TV Woman of Vision and a recipient of her city’s Arts and Culture Citation Award. She’s moved 40 times in her life from Badlands to Siksika Nation Reserve to hideous suburbs to Istanbul to the Sunshine Coast to her writer’s garret in a century-old temperamental house.
The storehouse of wonder and astonishment – Sherry Mossafer Rind /USA
Diary of the heart – Neal Hall /USA
Neil Hall is a graduate of Cornell and Harvard. He trained as an eye physician.Considered one of the most dynamic poets in North America, Hall has performed poetry readings throughout the U.S. and internationally. His writings bear strong witness to his passionate belief in equality and our collective rights to think, live and make harmonious decision based on our common good. Hall is the author of seven poetry books and has been translated into eight languages.
Prof. Chris Laoutaris, (University of Birmingham, UK) said of Hall – Once in a generation a voice pierces through the injustices, inequities and horrors of the age in which it flowers into speech, and in that flowering precision and pain take on a deeply instructive form of beauty. Hall is a master wordsmith whose every phrase is the craft of a seer. There is a profound and boding kinetic reflexivity to his style which makes even the smallest and most trembling of his words thunder from the page and into the heart. Andriana Minou, 2019 Judge, Greece’s Eyelands International Book Awards stated, the poet’s voice is guttural yet soothing, lulling the reader into a timeless world of injustice, conflict and rage but also of hope, courage and inner freedom. Hall’s poetry is a torrent of vibrating words engulfing the reader in their powerful rhythm and heartfelt truth. http://www.nealhallpoet.com
CHILDREN /GRAPHIC NOVELS PUBLISHED
Swords in the sky – Judy Brulo /United Kingdom
Judy grew up in Shepshed, Leicestershire (UK). She studied at the Guildhall School of Music, London. After graduating, she worked as a professional violist and teacher. Judy’s love of writing emerged through the need to create material for her Early Years music groups. Then, along came the real inspiration: grandchildren, Kaia and Taio, for whom she wrote stories on almost a weekly basis. She lived in Cambridge for many years, before moving to Cyprus for six years. She now lives in North West Warwickshire with her husband, Alex. Judy spends her time writing and presenting Reading-Music-Action sessions..
Susie in Spectra – W.E. Lake / United Kingdom
W E Lake: I work as a General Practitioner in Cheshire, England, after five years working as a Children’s Doctor. I love both reading and writing to help keep a good work-life balance. I am a member of the Society of Medical writers and the Silver Quill Publishing group. I hope my middle-grade fiction books will transport children to magical , imaginary places, just like I can remember escaping to as a child. I enjoy spending family time with my husband Simon and our two daughters Molly and Bella.
The infinity trap – Ian C Douglas /United Kingdom
London-born Ian C Douglas chose writing for a career while still in junior school. This met with disapproval from family and teachers alike and it was not until adulthood that he was able to make good his literary aspirations. While teaching English in East Asia, he got his first break writing travel articles for the press. In 2006, he returned to the United Kingdom, where he graduated with an MA in Creative Writing (Distinction). Since then, Ian has become a published science-fiction author for children, along with the odd children’s non-fiction book. Ian also writes short stories and his work has appeared in a variety of media and formats. This includes the Snowpo the Bear picture books. Today, Ian lives with his family in the heart of Robin Hood country and supports his local writing community. He is a founder member of the Nottingham Writer’s Studio and served as a local literacy ambassador. Ian is regularly seen on school visits, book fairs and Notts TV.
The Red Eyes – Lee Ching Kai /Malaysia
Lee Ching Kai is a graduate of UniversitiTunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Malaysia. He is an international bronze-medallist, award-winning, and news-featured author who has written and published seven books. He has won the Bronze Medal Award in the WOW Kampar’sMENTION 2019 Best Feature Writing Award in Malaysia. Also, he has won the EyelandsAward’s Three Rock Writers’ Resort Residency Program Spring/Summer 2020 in Greece.Too, he has won the Bronze Medal Award in the Florida Authors & Publishers Association (FAPA) President’s Book Awards 2020, one of the largest and most prestigious annual, international book awards contests based in the United States. He has also been longlisted in the 2019 Bumblebee Flash Fiction Prize, which is based in Canada, and shortlisted in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition 2020, which is based in India. While he has been featured in The Star newspaper, he was also been featured in Guang Ming Daily newspaper in Malaysia due to his accomplishments in the global awards contests in 2020. Additionally, he has been featured twice in UTAR online news and once in QIUP online news. He likes to participate in worldwide competitions to discern his level in writing.
CHILDREN / GRAPHIC NOVELS UNPUBLISHED
Tweaked Tales – Judy Brulo / United Kingdom / see above
Grandma Grumbly: A Story to Read Aloud – Mike Mesterton-Gibbons /USA
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University and the author of several books on applied mathematics, most recently the 3rd edition of An Introduction to Game-Theoretic Modelling (American Mathematical Society, 2019). Although he still models animal behaviour, not teaching has allowed him to proceed with writing plans that have been on hold for many years, and he is currently working on a range of children’s stories. He also writes verse. He won the Adult Category of the Southern Shakespeare Company’s 2020 Sonnet Contest with an acrostic sonnet. Other acrostic sonnets have since appeared in Light and other magazines, and his limericks have appeared in Britain’s Daily Mail. He has now lived in Tallahassee for 38 years, but plans to return to his native UK as soon as the course of the pandemic permits
Surfing, Your Star Shines Above Me – Vezna Andrews /USA
When not writing,Vezna Andrews is either surfing the Pacific with the dolphins, at the skate park with her son, Jack, or painting in her studio. A scholarship recipient at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), her paintings exhibitat galleries and museums including the Bolinas Museum and the LACMA Art Rental and Sales Galleryand are featured in the book Create Perfect Paintings: An Artist’s Guide to Visual Thinking. Originally from New York City, Vezna lives in Manhattan Beach, California. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and The Painter’s Group(TPG) of the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA). Her debut novel which she also illustrated, Surfing, Your Star Shines Above Me, is a coming-of-age story about a girl finding her own power by mastering a challenging new passion. Proud to be the only “soul surfer” mom sponsored by her local surf shop, Vezna is excited to share her love and knowledge of surfing with young readers. She can be found online at Vezna.net.
Maximum Flight – Abigail Keoghan /Ireland
My name is Abigail Keoghan and I live in Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland. I am twelve years old and I have a younger sister who is seven years old. I got my inspiration for writing by my book-loving aunts both wishing to publish a book. I love to write. My first book that I wrote was called 1941. It was about a young fourteen year old girl who went on a mission to save her father. I entered it into a competition when I was ten. Sadly I didn’t win but I decided to enter another competition the Eyelands’s book awards competition with Kenya’s Education (originally called Education or not I must learn something). I just love to write and I wish to become an author or artist when I am older
Amy’s Plan – Eunice Barnes / Canada
Eunice Barnes was born, raised, and has lived in Toronto her entire life. She had four children and faithfully read them bedtime stories each night. Some stories were very good, but far too many were awful. And so, after she caught the writing bug, she decided to try her hand at writing children’s stories that would be entertaining not only for the recipient but for the adult reader too. And thus, was born Amy’s Plan. Currently, Eunice runs a small but successful dog walking business, which she enjoys for the most part, except when it is raining. She also spends time playing with her two-year-old grandson while attempting to decipher his toddler language. She is writing her second novel and spends time sending out her work, which includes a completed novel and two more children’s stories to agents, publishers, and, of course, competitions.
SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED
The World Within-A Play – Yamini Mathur / Thailand
A graduate in psychology; born and brought up in India, Yamini lives in Thailand with her husband and two children. Part-time writer, part-time baker, she has 12 years of work experience in the hospitality industry. The World Within is her debut book written in the form of a play. An avid reader, she is also a volunteer in an International school giving reading classes to a group of students. She wrote the story with the end in mind. After her mother’s death, it was much more difficult in accepting the sudden and untimely death of a close friend. Thus started life’s queries pondering questions on life and death. The thirst for knowledge led to a love for reading, beginning with books on major religion, and also digging deep into numerology and astrology, when realization struck; the strength of Karma over the power of God. The World Within, a personal quest, with a primary goal of understanding rather than explaining or preaching.
Nom De Plume – Christy Iron /Greece
Making love while levitating three feet in the air – Jeff Fearnside /USA
Jeff Fearnside is the author of two full-length books—the short-story collection Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and the essay collection Ships in the Desert (forthcoming from the SFWP Press)—and two chapbooks: Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land (Standing Rock Cultural Arts) and A Husband and Wife Are One Satan (fiction, forthcoming from Orison Books as winner of the 2020 Orison Chapbook Prize).
Fearnside’s individual stories, essays, and poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies such as The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review, Story, The Pinch, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet (Press 53), and Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (University of Washington Press).
Among several competitive writing fellowships he has received are residencies at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky, and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Other awards for his writing include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Project’s Literary Awards Program, the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize, the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award, and an Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission. Photo taken by Sabina Poole for the Oregon Arts Commission.
Hotel du Jack – Dan Brotzel /United Kingdom
Dan’s debut collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, is published by Sandstone Press. He is also co-author of a forthcoming comic novel about an eccentric writers’ group, Work in Progress (Unbound). He won the 2018 Riptide Journal short story competition, and was runner-up in the Leicester Writes 2019 story competition. He has words in places like Slackjaw, X-RAY, Pithead Chapel, Ellipsis Zine, Reflex Fiction, Cabinet of Heed, Bending Genres and Spelk. His stories have received both Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. He tweets as @brotzel_fiction and writes about many aspects of writing at https://danielbrotzel.medium.com/
SHORT STORIES UNPUBLISHED
Discarded Encounters – Gita Simic/ Bosnia-Herzegovina
Gita T. Simic: 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, piano teacher and early music enthusiast. We now live close to the Adriatic Sea, in Southern Herzegovina (because the sea holds no memories but for the rocky cliffswith pine forests, the morning mist and clear waters of turquoise blue).
My background is in philosophy and IT. I studied history of philosophy at the Belgrade University before moving to Canada, where I obtained a degreein computer programming and systems analysis. So, a systems analyst by day, I’m a historical fiction writer by night, oftentimes to create a world of imagination, in which, perhaps, to take a refuge.
The Girl Who Can Take The Most Electricity – Anna Mantzaris /USA
Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ambit, The Cortland Review, The Lascaux Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction and The Sonora Review. She has been awarded writing residencies for her fiction by Hedgebrook (Whidbey Island, Washington) and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, Nebraska). She teaches writing in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.
Blu’s Muse – Craig (blu) Ritchie / Canada
Craig (blu) Ritchie: I was born in a mid-western city to an upper middle class WASP family with a moto of “cocktails, conversation and music”. Thus, my growing up years fostered a spoiled boy with all the toys. My parents were definitely not bad people however as I grew into young adulthood I challenged my family values.A nagging perspective emerged:”Is that all there is?” This lead to a deep interest in government. I was always an honours student and graduated with a Masters in Political Science from a local university and secured gainful employment in policy analysis in the Office of the Premier, a family friend. At the same time, I married far to young and immature at age 23 and was stuck in businesswith 4 children and a stay at home wife. Fundamentally I was conflicted. I was not doing what liked nor did I have the right life partner.By mid life, deeply unhappy I divorced my wife and sold my business to return to university foran Education degree. I love my 4 children andhave brought them all to Thailand where I have lived and worked as an ESL teacher since 2007. I love the thai people, work experience,have improved my golf, (hence the nickname blu) and Buddhist culture.My artistic temperament has flourished. Since retirement, I have taken pilgrimages to Santiago de Campostella and Sligo, Ireland.
Don Quixote’s Death and Other Stories-Ratomir Rale Damjanovic / Serbia
Ratomir Rale Damjanović (1945) Belgrade, Serbia, graduated at the Department of Yugoslav and World Literature of the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade.
Damjanovic has published some 20 books of novels, short stories and essays. In his romanesque and story-telling prose, Damjanovic portraits the world of artists. The novels Dirty Man, Sancho’s Version and You Will Swim Forever are profound stories about the disintegration of Yugoslavia. At the International Congress held at Cervantes’s native place, Alkali de Arnes, in Spain, at the end of 2007, one of the panels dealt with the literary world of the novel Sancho’s Version. For his literary, journalistic and cultural work, Ratomir Rale Damjanović received the “Miloš Crnjanski” Award, 1994; “Isidora Sekulić” Award, 2005; the Dragon Children’s Games Award for the best novel for “Sky Above the Circus” in 2004; “October Award of the City of Beograd” in 1987. and the “Golden Microphone of the Radio Beograd” for his life achievement in 2008. He established the publishing company Itaka together with his two sons in 1992. At the Faculty of Teacher Education in Belgrade, Damjanovic teaches an elective course: Telling an Artistic Text within the subject Introduction to the Interpretation of Literature. Damjanovic’s works have been translated into English, Spanish, Chinese, Italian and Greek.
Goddesses from Clay and Shrapnel – Lahari Mahalanabish (Chatterji) / India
Lahari Mahalanabish (Chatterji) is a writer and poet based in Kolkata, India. Her book of poems entitled One Hundred Poems had been published by Writers Workshop, India in 2007. She was a finalist in Erbacce Prize Poetry Competition in 2009 and also in 2010. Her poems have found places in anthologies such as Yellow Chair Review 2015 Anthology, Freedom Raga (2020) and are forthcoming in The Kali Project anthology. Her short fiction was longlisted for the Grindstone Short Story Prize in 2020. Her short stories have appeared in various literary magazines like The Bombay Review, The Bangalore Review, Soft Cartel, Muse India, Himal Southasian, Spark, Indian Review, The Criterion, Ashvamegh and newspapers such as The Statesman and The Asian Age. Her poems have found place in Yellow Chair Review, Poets Online, Saw, The Statesman and The Hans India. A software engineer by profession, she blogs (http://theserpentacursedrhyme.blogspot.com) to chronicle her travels, describe the antics of her little daughter, and highlight the work carried out by the orphanage, blind home and rural empowerment initiative she is associated with. She was also a finalist in Eyelands Book Awards 2019.
NOVELS PUBLISHED
Empire of Glass – Kaitlin Solimine / USA
Kaitlin Solimine is the award-winning author of Empire of Glass (Ig Publishing, NYC), which was a finalist for the 2017 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and a 2018 Firecracker Award finalist. Her multilingual children’s book, Sleeping Stones (pub. Madeleine Editions, 2020) won the Dragonfly Book Awards’ Green/Environmental book of the year. She has been a U.S. Department of State Fulbright Creative Fellow in China, winner of the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award judged by Colson Whitehead, and a SF Grotto Writing Fellow, among other honors. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Guernica Magazine, The Huffington Post, China Daily, and numerous anthologies. Kaitlin is co-founder of Hippo Reads, a network and magazine connecting academic insights and scholars to the wider public. She resides in San Francisco with her husband and two children where she is at work on a second novel as well as a book of essays.
Misplaced Heads – Jayanthi Sankar / Singapore
Accomplished Author Jayanthi Sankar, born and brought up in India, lives in Singapore since 1990. Her collection of short stories – Dangling Gandhi, was the winner out of the seven finalists in the category of fiction: short story in 2020 International Book Award American book fest. Literary Titan award is another international award it was bestowed. She’s been published in several magazines and e-zines like the Indian ruminations, muse india, The Wagon, in Opinion. Her short stories have found places in various anthologies including ‘the other’. She has been invited to participate in the panels of literary festivals such as (Asia Pacific Writers & Translators) APWT 2018 at Gold coast, Singapore Writers Festival, Seemanchal International literary festival, ASEAN- India Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Writers Festival. A watercolour artist, she has been a freelancer for more than a decade and a half, with three years of experience in journalism.
The Agent-Marsha Roberts /USA
Marsha Roberts is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and playwright. Several e-zines and anthologies have featured Marsha’s fiction. Her short plays have been produced in various US and international venuesand her skits have been produced by an SF comedy troupe. She has four full-length plays in various stages of production/development. Many of her plays can be found on The New Play Exchange. “The Agent,” her novel about an elegant scam, was published in 2020 and is available on Amazon. Marsha is on the Board of Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco, an alumna of PlayGround SF’s Writers’ Company and a member of The Dramatists Guild and Left Coast Writers.Aside from her writing career, Marsha worked around the world as an H.R. executive and management consultant and still consults from time to time. She is also a pro-bono founder of a nonprofit organization that furnishes apartments of the formerly homeless.
Spivey Davenport – VM Roberts /USA
The memory stones – Caroline Brothers / United Kingdom
Caroline Brothers is the author of two novels and a work of nonfiction about modern war photography. Her fiction is often concerned with lives caught up in the aftermath of historical events. The Memory Stones (Bloomsbury), set in Latin America and Europe, is the story of one family’s search for a stolen child, and the resistance of that child to being found. Her first novel, Hinterland, builds on her ground-breaking work in journalism to chart the journey of two Afghan children on the backroads of Europe, and won a McKitterick award. Its stage adaptation, described by the New Yorker as ‘unforgettable in content and form,’ is currently on international tour.Born in Australia, Caroline trained as an historian before qualifying as a correspondent with Reuters, reporting from Europe and Latin America before joining the International New York Times in Paris. She studied fiction with Barbara Trapido, Margaret Drabble, Michèle Roberts and Tim Pears, among others. The British Council’s Shakespeare-Cervantes writer-in-residence in Madrid in 2016, she has been a literature fellow at Writers OMI in New York, Sangam House in India, Cove Park and Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. She is now based in London.Flight, the stage adaptation of my award-winning novel Hinterland (Bloomsbury), is a New York Times critic’s pick and was described by the New Yorker as ‘unforgettable in content and form’. It opens in London in Dec 2020 in a co-production between the Barbican and The Bridge as it continues its international tour.The Memory Stones, my second novel which is also published by Bloomsbury, was inspired by the stolen children of the Disappeared in Argentina. A Woman’s Hour feature, it’s also a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick & the subject of an ABC radio ‘In Conversation’ interview with Richard Fidler.www.facebook.com/MemoryStones1 @CaroBrothers caroline.brothers@gmail.com http://www.carolinebrothers.com
photo: © Rannjan Joawn
NOVELS UNPUBLISHED
The Kitten – Laurie Jameson /USA
Laurie Jameson is an administrative paper-pusher by day, a writer by night and, a self-proclaimed book hoarder. While freely admitting she’s a book addict, it’s not an admission of guilt, but rather a badge she proudly displays for all the world to see. (One can never have too many book cases and decorating with books is pure genius.) She does admit to judging potential friends based upon the number of books displayed in their home or the lack thereof. She lives with her 100 lb. chocolate lab who is a massive attention-hound. He controls her life and rules her heart but, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She never had any intention of becoming a writer but, instead stumbled on it quite by accident after having a rather intense dream and telling her husband it would make a great book. He talked her into writing it by presenting her with a new laptop and telling her to get on with it. No one said it would be easy, and that’s probably a good thing, because they would have been lying. But it’s certainly been interesting. Her first novel, The Waystation, won the Illumination Awards 2019 Gold Medal for best Christian fiction in the Enduring Light category; that’s fiction published between the years 2000-2019. The Kitten is her second novel.
My blood on your head- Elias Yussif / Ghana
Goldfish – J A Gardiner / United Kingdom
J.A. Gardiner: A South London-based writer and scriptwriter whose work has featured in a number of publications, including The Grain, Ellipsis, and Creative Boom. When he’s not writing he enjoys playing music and being in nature, and has walked the breadth of Northern Spain. He is currently working on a debut novel.
Blue Monkeys – Christie B. Cochrell / USA
Christie B. Cochrell has always been lured by archaeology and ancient Greece, has studied with Classical archaeologists and participated in two digs. Having traveled extensively all of her life, she especially treasured time spent on the Greek mainland and various islands—most memorably a month on Crete, exploring almost end to end and doing research there. Her writing has been published by Catamaran Literary Reader, Orca, Lowestoft Chronicle, Cumberland River Review (with a Pushcart Prize nomination), and Tin House, and a variety of other journals around the world, and has won several awards including a New Letters Literary Award and the Literal Latté Short Short Contest. Two unpublished novels were chosen as finalists for the Eludia Award given by Hidden River Arts. Chosen as New Mexico Young Poet of the Year while growing up in Santa Fe, she’s recently published a volume of collected poems, Contagious Magic. Christie lives and writes by the ocean in Santa Cruz, California. She loves the play of light, the journeyings of time, things ephemeral and ancient.
The Gift of Sunshine: Story of a Hong Kong Family- Susan Wan Dolling /USA
Lizardmaid – Robin Luce Martin / USA
Robin Luce Martin’s fiction will appear in TELEPHONE, a global art project launching in the spring of 2021. During the weeks before the 2020 U.S. elections, she participated in 1,000 Hours of Outrage with word art. Robin Luce Martin won the 2019 Eyelands International Novel Manuscript contest for Old Scores and (co-authored) the play, “On the Street Where We Live,” published in Kenyon Review, October 2019. She has received honors for stories, and novel excerpts, including the 2009 Tennessee Williams Festival Story Prize (judged by Richard Ford and published in New Orleans Review), SF PEN John Keats Soul Awakening Competitions, Adanna Adrienne Rich Tribute, Alabama Conclave, and Out Like a Lion was shortlisted for the 2017 Del Sol First Novel and the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize.In 2015, she co-founded #YeahYouWrite a monthly author series in New York City.
HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR PUBLISHED
A wolf by the ears – Wayne Karlin / USA
Wayne Karlin has published eight novels: Marble Mountain, The Wished-For Country, Prisoners, Lost Armies, The Extras, Us, and Crossover, and three works of non-fiction: Rumors and Stones, War Movies, and Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam. The eighth novel, A Wolf by the Ears won the 2019 Juniper Prize for Fiction and was subsequently published in March, 2020. Some of his other books have been published in translation in Denmark, Sweden, Italy and Vietnam, and Crossover was also published in the United Kingdom. In addition to the Juniper, Prize Karlin received five State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994 and 2004), the Paterson Prize in Fiction for 1999, and the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in the Arts Award in 2005. / Wayne Karlin drawing by Tran Nhug
A roll of the dice – Mona Dash / United Kingdom
Mona Dash is the author of A Roll of the Dice : a story of loss, love and genetics, A Certain Way, Untamed Heart, and Dawn-drops. Her work has been listed in leading competitions such as Novel London 20, SI Leeds Literary award, Fish, Bath, Bristol, Leicester Writes and Asian Writer. Her short story collection Let us look elsewhere is forthcoming from Dahlia Publishing in 2021. A graduate in Telecoms Engineering, she holds an MBA, and also a Masters in Creative Writing (with distinction) She works in a global tech company and lives in London. www.monadash.net
Dear Suffolk: My Teenage Memoirs – VM Roberts / USA
Exile Music – Jennifer Steil / United Kingdom
Jennifer Steil is an award-winning author and journalist who lives in many countries (currently Uzbekistan/France/UK). Her new novel, Exile Music, released by Viking in May, has received many terrific reviews, including a starred Booklist review, and was chosen by Good Morning America as one of the 25 Novels You’ll Want to Read This Summer. Her previous novel, The Ambassador’s Wife, won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Best Novel award and the Phillip McMath Post Publication book award. It was shortlisted for both the Bisexual Book Award and the Lascaux Novel Award. The novel has received much acclaim, notably in the Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The New York Times Book Review. Jennifer’s first book, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (Broadway Books, 2010), a memoir about her time as editor of the Yemen Observer newspaper in Sana’a, was hailed by The New York Times, Newsweek, and the Sydney
Morning Herald. Spinning: Choreography for Come Home – Janine Kovac / USA
Janine Kovac is an interdisciplinary artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a writer, dancer, choreographer, cognitive linguist, database architect, wife, mother of three children, and curator of literary events.Janine graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Berkeley. Her thesis, “A Linguistic Analysis of Parenting” received the Robert J. Glushko award for Outstanding Research in Cognitive Science and became the foundation for her first book Brain Changer: A Mother’s Guide to Cognitive Science. Janine’s most recent publications have been with Writer’s Digest, Publishers Weekly, Mothers Always Write, Redivider, Soundings East, the New Ohio Review, Burningword Literary Journal and in the anthology What We Didn’t Expect from Melville House. Her memoir, SPINNING: Choreography for Coming Home, was a 2019 winner for the National Indie Excellence Awards and a semi-finalist for Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize. Janine is an alumna of the Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, and the Mineral School and is a recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship. She is working on a memoir that questions the pursuit of art. Janine lives with her family in Oakland, California.
HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR UNPUBLISHED
Wishbone: The Enduring Joy and Increasing Meaning of Odyssey
-Carol W. Folbre /USA / WITHDRAW
The Red Tunic – Kate Wiseman / United Kingdom
Kate Wiseman : I live in the UK where I work as an English tutor and am the author of an internationally published series of light-hearted children’s novels, but my real love is history. The Red Tunic was inspired by my long-held fascinations with the First World War and the Suffragette movement and has been my labour of love for four years. I have a sequel planned which I intend to start writing next year. My other love is mudlarking – searching for artefacts left or lost near rivers and seas, and I’m a licensed mudlark. I’m currently working on a series of novels featuring the adventures of a group of Victorian mudlarks who find some very strange things indeed. My own mudlarking ambitions are to find an intact witch bottle and a medieval knight’s spur. A working class girl raised in the 70s, I missed out on the opportunity to go to university until I was 38. When I got there, I studied English and Creative Writing and that finally gave me the courage to attempt what I’d always dreamed of – writing novels. Now I’m making up for lost time.
Remembering Greece-Wendy Craig / New Zealand
Wendy Craig first visited Greece in 1974 and has returned many times. It is the country where she most feels at home. From 1990 to 2014, Wendy combined her love of travel and history to work as a travel writer and newspaper and magazine columnist. She has contributed articles to newspapers and magazines in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Her travel stories and photographs were regularly posted on-line in an internet-based magazine. She also wrote a blog on cruising. Two books on travel quotations she researched and edited were published by Reed Publishers in New Zealand. She has a Diploma in Travel Writing (with Distinction). Wendy is also a short story writer. Her award winning stories have been published in anthologies, magazines and newspapers in New Zealand, the U.K. and Greece. She has completed an Advanced Diploma in Applied Writing. Wendy is currently working on a novel set in Crete.
The Girl Who Got Out of Zanzibar – Sophie Neville / United Kingdom
Sophie Neville : Having once driven from London to Johannesburg, Sophie Neville lived in southern Africa for twelve years, using her degree in anthropology while volunteering on projects to combat HIV/AIDS. After returning to the UK, she became a director of Witness Films Ltd and president of The Arthur Ransome Society. Thanks to becoming inadvertently well known for playing ‘Titty’ in the movie ‘Swallows and Amazons'(1974), she has been speaking at literary festivals, on ITV News and BBC Radio, with an appearance on ‘BBC Antiques Roadshow’ recorded for 2021. Her non-fiction publications include -‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ (Lutterworth Press, 2017) and two other humous memoirs: ‘Ride the Wings of Morning’ and ‘Funnily Enough’. Sophie has a background in television production. After working on dramas such as ‘My Family and Other Animals’, ‘Eastenders’ and ‘Doctor Who’, she directed a documentary for Channel 4 in Kenya, set up Blue Peter in South Africa and exciting wildlife documentaries in Botswana and Namibia. While working full time at BBC Television, she directed a number of comedy dramas and produced the ‘Inset’ series. She and her husband love travelling through Greece and much enjoyed the Three Rock Writer’s Residency in Crete. https://sophieneville.net
American Heroine – Katherine Lim / United Kingdom
Katherine Lim holds an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford University, where she was the Faith Ivens-Franklin Fellow at Keble College. She is a 2021 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Fellow at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Tempe, Arizona, a 2020 mentee in the AWP Writer-to-Writer Program, and was a Finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She was the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers (ALSCW) Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, and has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cill Rialaig, Ireland, Norton Island, Maine, the Faber Residency, Olot, Spain, the Hambidge Center, the Sundress Academy of the Arts, Can Serrat, Spain, Arteles, Finland, and scholarships from Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Aspen Summer Words, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her short story, “The Party”, on Vita Sackville-West, was performed at the Tara Arts Theatre, London. She’s passionate about writing fiction that challenges how we view history. You can find her on Twitter @katherine_lim7.
* where we mention just the name it is because the writer didn’t send bio/or photo – it is not obligatory of course
Eyelands Book Awards 
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