SHORT STORIES UNPBLISHED
Stories, Mostly Short, Often Deadly – Townsend Walker /USA
Townsend Walker draws inspiration from cemeteries, foreign places, violence and strong women. A collection of short stories, “3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies & other stories,”Deeds Publishing,2018. A novella, “La Ronde,” Truth Serum Press, 2015. Over one hundred short stories and poems published in literary journals and included in fifteen anthologies. Two nominations for the PEN/O.Henry Award. He reviews for the “New York Journal of Books” During a career in banking, he wrote three books on finance: “A Guide for Using the Foreign Exchange Market,” “Managing Risk with Derivatives,” and “Managing Lease Portfolios.” His website is https://www.townsendwalker.com
SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED
12 Random Words / 12 Mots au Hasard – Fabiana Elisa Martínez /USA
Fabiana Elisa Martínez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She graduated from UCA University with a degree in Linguistics and World Literature. She is a linguist, a language teacher, and a writer. She speaks English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She has lived in Dallas, Texas, for twenty years. She is the author of the bilingual short story collection 12 Random Words, the short story Stupidity, published as an independent book by Pierre Turcotte Editor, and the grammar series Spanish 360 with Fabiana. Other short stories of hers have been published in Rigorous Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Ponder Review, Hindsight Magazine, The Good Life Review (UK), The Halcyone, Rhodora Magazine (India), Mediterranean Poetry, Writers and Readers Magazine (UK), Libretto Magazine (Nigeria), Automatic Pilot (Ireland), Lusitania (Buenos Aires), The Pilgrims of the Plate (Buenos Aires), Heartland Society of Women Writers, Egophobia Journal (Romania), Defunkt Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Freshwater Literary Journal, Syncopation Literary Journal, The Raven’s Perch, and the anthologies Writers of Tomorrow, Pure Slush-Love, Lifespan 4 Anthology (Australia), the 2022 Wordrunner Anthology, the Crossing the Tees Firth Short Story Anthology (England), and Pure Slush-Marriage, Lifespan 6 Anthology (Australia). Two short stories were featured in the Manawaker Flash Fiction Podcast.
NOVEL UNPUBLISHED
Ain’t No Jazz in Kansas City – Bruce Rodgers /USA
I began a freelance writing career in 1980 though I started writing earlier in typical teenage angst fashion in high school. While freelancing I held a variety of blue-and white-collar jobs including government bureaucrat, substitute teacher, bartender, landscape laborer, delivery driver, deli cook and correctional officer. I landed a full-time writing/editing job in 1993 as editor of a Kansas City liberal newsweekly. Left that job after a corporate buyout and bought a small, regional publication focusing on antiques and historical tourism. Sold that publication eighteen years later, moved to Florida and began writing short stories, essays and reworking my novel. I was a draftee during the Vietnam War era, thankfully never sent to that tragedy in Southeast Asia. As one gets older the writing life becomes more centered in memories and the sharing with others about what happened and could have happened.
NOVEL PUBLISHED
Buttercups in the Basement – Jane Harvey /United Kingdom
Dreena Collins was born in Jersey, Channel Islands. She has a background in teaching and Special Educational Needs and now works as the Deputy Executive Officer of a Mental Health charity. She lives with her husband, teenage son, and a very grumpy dog. As well as her feel-good Hummingbird House novels (under Jane Harvey), Dreena has published a number of short fiction collections and a suspense novel, And Then She Fell. She has been listed and placed in numerous writing competitions, including The Bridport Prize and Bath Flash Fiction Award. Her flash fiction collection, Bird Wing, was a finalist in the 2020 SPR Book Awards. Her hobbies include eating spicy food and unintentionally waking at 3.30 am, and she makes it a matter of principle to fall over at least once a month.
*(Contemporary fiction as Jane Harvey)
HISTORICAL NOVEL / MEMOIR UNPUBLISHED
A Girl Called Redemption – Sophie Neville /United Kingdom
Sophie Neville began writing A Girl Called Redemption on an Eyelands’ Three Rock Residency in Crête. This historical novel set in the early 1960s is the sequel to Makorongo’s War which won a Eyelands prize in 2019. An Anthropology graduate, Sophie spent twelve years collecting stories in southern Africa, bringing out two humorous memoirs: Ride the Wings of Morning, and Funnily Enough serialised in iBelieve magazine. After her ebook The Secrets of Filming Swallows & Amazons became a bestseller, she was commissioned to write The Making of Swallows and Amazons(1974), now published by The Lutterworth Press.After acting in movies as a child, Sophie went into television production, working on BBC drama serials and directing her first documentary for Channel 4 when driving from London to Johannesburg. She wrote a number of her own programmes for BBC Education and worked freelance for the BBC Natural History Unitin Botswana and Namibia. While president of The Arthur Ransome Society, Sophie wrote forewords for books and gave Q&As at cinemas, also speaking at literary festivals, on BBC Radio and ITV News. She is now focused on writing novels set in Africa.
HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR PUBLISHED
The Common Wife: Getting Lost, Dancing Naked & Collecting Seashells – Lindy Hughes /Canada
After forays into journalism and astrology, and a failed attempt at joining the circus, Lindy Hughes taught English literature at the University of South Africa. For the past 23 years, since immigrating to Canada, she has lived in a navy-blue cottage in Eagle Harbour, BC, where she writes, dances, and edits a community newspaper. Her writing workshops (in different parts of the world) break as many rules as possible. She collects rocks, burns stuff under the moon, and walks barefoot whenever she can, even though it embarrasses her family. The Common Wife: Getting Lost, Dancing Naked & Collecting Seashells is her second book, and she wrote it during her peculiar midlife crisis. The crisis led to her secret life as a middle-aged burlesque dancer, and then a 700-kilometre pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago, all in an attempt to find her Big Life and hunt down God. She failed on both counts. Lindy still goes walking with Petunia, her purple backpack. She also still gets lost – often – and each time, in her lostness, she finds the most fantastic surprises. Like strangers. And their stories. She is presently working on her fourth book. You can find her at LindyHughes.com.
CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHED
The Venetian Pearls – Karin Bachmann /Switzerland
Karin Bachmann was born in the year of the first moon landing. Perhaps this explains why she is equally interested in technology, history, and stories. Karin has been writing children’s and YA books for over 30 years. She’s the author of over 10 whodunits and several short stories, has won prizes for her writing, and has appeared on the radio and on local TV. In 1993 and 1995, she travelled to New Zealand, ostensibly to learn English. That was when she became permanently infected with the travelling-bug. She spent every free minute exploring the country and its people – and, incidentally, earned her Proficiency in English qualification. Since that time, she has been expressing her whims and her passion for adventures in English as well. In 2021, Karin was awarded the Cultural Prize (Kulturpreis) of her hometown of Pieterlen in the Swiss Canton of Berne. One of her books in German (Monster im Dunkeln) will be on the IBBY list of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities in 2023. Karin lives in an apartment full of books that also serves as a base camp for hikes in the Alps and the Jura Mountains.
POETRY UNPUBLISHED
Obits, tales & accounts from WW1 – Joan Michelson
Joan Michelson’s collections are: ‘The Family Kitchen’, 2018, The Finishing Line Press, USA, ‘Landing Stage’, 2017), SPM Publishers, UK, ‘Bloomvale Home’, 2016, Original Plus Books, UK and ‘Toward the Heliopause’, 2011, Poetic Matrix Press, USA. She’s received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Centre for the Arts, Valparaiso, Spain, Sangam House, India and other foundations. A folio collection ‘Accident’ was one of five finalists in the Manchester 2020 International Poetry Prize. Her collection ‘Refugees’ was one of five finalists for the Eyelands, Greece, 2021 International Book Prize. Her poems have won the Bristol Poetry Competition, the Torriano International Poetry Competition, the Hamish Canham Prize, and others. Originally from the United States, she lives in London and teaches creative writing to medical students at Kings College, University of London. Previously an English lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton, she was responsible for Creative Writing and Holocaust Studies. Her reading, research and teaching of the Holocaust, in particular, artistic responses to it, lies behind the poetry collection, ‘Obits, Tales & Accounts form WWII’
POETRY PUBLISHED
The Moral Judgement of Butterflies – k.eltinaé /Spain
k.eltinaé is a diaspora poet of Sudanese-Nubian and Mediterranean descent, whose work is centered around otherness, cultural/geographic displacement, generational trauma, and exile. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human: Many Muslim Worlds (Penguin), The African American Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. His debut collection The Moral Judgement of Butterflies won The Beverly Prize for International Literature 2019 (BSPG Press). He is a World Literature lecturer and an Oldies and Classic Afrobeat Disc jockey residing in Granada, Spain.
SPECIAL PRIZE
Fluffy Happiness -Iryna Polishchuk /Ukraine
Iryna Polishchuk is an author of children’s literature, English teacher with twenty years of teaching experience in higher educational institutions, translator. She is 44 years old. She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine and spent most of her life there. She is a mother of two children and is engaged in charity work now, helping displaced persons by conducting free lessons and consultations. Finalist of the “Children’s Coronation” competition in 2021. She gave the last copies of her books to orphans who were forced to move from Kyiv to Lviv due to the war. All others were successfully sold before the full-scale invasion. Author of book series: – Fluffy Happiness
– Letter of Hope – Top-5 the best children novel of Ukraine in 2021
– Brave Heart 2022 – not published yet
She considers it her public duty to spread the human values with the help of literature. She loves children and finds the time to teach them. She adores music, books and good cartoons. She tries to make a world a little bit better. Her books are full of beauty and hope, which are very important things in our troubled world.
// GRAND PRIZE 2022 – UNPUBLISHED
Broken Kismet – Hardy Griffin /USA
Hardy Griffin has published writing in Aesthetica Magazine, Fresh.ink, New Flash Fiction, Alimentum, Assisi, The Washington Post, American Letters & Commentary, and a chapter in The Gotham Writer’s Guide to Writing Fiction (Bloomsbury). His translations can be found in Words Without Borders, The Istanbul Biennial, and for Ermeniler, an award-winning book on the lives of Armenians in contemporary Turkey. He is the founding editor of Novel Slices, a publication dedicated solely to novel excerpts.
GRAND PRIZE 2022 – PUBLISHED
AMP’D – Ken Pisani /USA
In addition to his work as a novelist, Ken Pisani is an Emmy-nominated TV producer, screenwriter, playwright, and comic book author. His Los Angeles Times best-selling debut novel “AMP’D” was a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Earlier this year, Ken optioned his quirky mystery novella, “4 Corners,” for television. His recent novel, “The Defection and Subsequent Resurrection of Nikolai Pushkin,” (pub date TBD) is a decades-spanning farce based on true events. He recently completed a new novel, “Days Are Here Again,” and is working on a variety of new projects. Follow on Twitter: @kpsmartypants or visit kenpisani.com.
Eyelands Book Awards 