IRYNA POLISCHUK (Ukraine) CHILDREN’S BOOK UNPUBLISHED Braveheart
1.It is a great honour for me to be part of an international writing contest, especially of Eyelands Book Awards. This unique competition gives me a chance to become part of it. Thanks to amazing judges to choose my story this year!
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2. It is my fourth prize in my writing career and I am happy to receive it!
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3. My book Brave Heart is a winner this year, the category – Children Books Unpublished. It is part of a book series about an old cat from the shabbycardboard box, a little girl and their friends. It is full of hope, care and love. I understand quite well that today’s life of children is full of troubles and disasters. Unfortunately, they face difficulties and disappointments more often than they should. So, we should care about their mental health most of all.
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4. Kind and good literature helps children to overcome all these difficulties. Warm colour of the rainbow treats better than cold drops of the rain. Literature teaches how tocooperate,to communicate, to create something special, to understand the universe and to help each other in today’s troubled world. Reading is an incredible tool to make children’s dreams come true in adult life.
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5 .As for my future plan, I just say as Elton John said in his song – I’m still standing:) For sure, I will continue to write stories for kids. It has become animportant part of my life. I strongly believethat one day my stories find the way to the heart which needs it, even in the darkest time, and bring a magic light to a child’s world.
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ALEKSANDRA TRYNIECKA (Poland) CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHED Bunky and the Summer Wish
1. It is a true honour to become a prize winner of an international book contest – and, specifically, the prize winner of the amazing Eyelands Book Awards Contest! I am thinking about my wonderful Fellow Authors participating in Eyelands Book Awards 2024 whose books are also written from the bottom of their hearts – and I am honoured to find myself among them. I am also thinking about the wonderful Readers who are behind every book – and I feel a deep responsibility! I am overjoyed inside and deeply grateful to the Judging Committee for finding value in my work – Bunky’s story is a part of me, and receiving Eyelands Book Awards prize means the world to me!
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It is not the first prize in my writing career, yet each of the prizes received for my books means so much to me in unique ways, as each distinction is special, irreplaceable and offers me a conviction that writing is such a significant part of my life – especially writing Bunky’s book series. It also offers me what I call “literary wings” – a desire to offer my Readers the best of my works: to keep creating and writing in a genuine, passionate, graceful and loving way; to always offer “my best”. The feeling accompanying the reception of each distinction cannot be repeated. Receiving Eyelands Book Awards prize is such a significant moment in my writing career, as during the contest I could learn more about my amazing Fellow Authors who were competing in the same category (Children’s Books – Published) and learn about their beautiful works – each being one of the kind! I am deeply honoured that Bunky and the Summer Wish received such an incredible distinction – especially while being able to discover truly fabulous works written by my Fellow Authors!
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I believe that my literary character – Bunky – had always been deep inside my heart even before writing his story. I wrote the first book about Bunky – Bunky and the Walms: The Christmas Story (Wipf and Stock/ Resource Publications, 2021) – my debut novel – while realizing that I would like to share with the readers the world of an imperfect yet noble character with whom they would be able to sympathize and who could become the Hero of his Own Life. In May 2019 I was attending a conference in London and, during one of the breaks, I discovered a store with plush toys. One of the plush toys – a hippo – had a very humanlike expression on his face. It was partly critical, partly joyful – and I thought that this face expression might be hiding an amazing story! I began writing, and Bunky fully came to life! Then, while waiting for the publication of my novel, I took a thread and a needle and sewed my characters and their clothes – I wanted to have them close to me and to bridge the gap between our world and their literary reality. The second novel dedicated to Bunky – Bunky and the Summer Wish (2024) – was inspired by my desire to further portray Bunky as the hero of his Own Life – for I deeply believe that this is the most difficult and beautiful of tasks. While writing Bunky and the Summer Wish I was aware that Bunky’s story was not complete. Also, his further story was planted in my heart as soon as I finished writing the first volume. The Readers were hoping to hear more from Bunky as well, and I felt that, without Bunky’s story, my world would be incomplete too – as he became such a huge part of my life. In fact, Bunky is quite similar to me! In each book about Bunky I also hope to present what I call a “bunkyful life” – the type of life filled with positive magic, hope, goodness, nobility, kindness, gratitude, homeliness and joy from the simplest, tiniest things – a wholesome, fulfilling life that Bunky’s story celebrates. The kind of life we need the most.
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Winning a prize for a writer opens up a new door to creativity and paves the way for a new timeline in one’s writing career. It is like a magical portal allowing the writer to rejoice in each written word on a new, profoundly distinctive level. Winning a prize offers a deep reassurance, joy and powerful motivation to create at one’s best – it offers confidence that one’s voice is needed and creates an impact. It is like a beautiful meadow through which a writer strolls.
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Thank you! I cannot imagine my life without writing, and there is so much writing-related planning going on in my heart now at the onset of 2025. I definitely hope to expand Bunky’s story. Currently, I am also putting the finishing touches on my poetry collection which means a lot to me on a personal level too. Moreover, I am writing and editing a novel dedicated to adults, and it will be my first adult fiction. I am excited while thinking about the future writing journey – about each book, every Reader and Fellow Author encountered on this beautiful literary path! However, wherever it takes me, I am taking Bunky with me! J
With love and best wishes, Aleksandra
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KAREN MARTIN (Australia) SELF PUBLISHED Dancing the Labyrinth
1. Receiving the news I had won was a shot of pure happiness. I feel proud, happy and thrilled. It’s an honour forDancing the Labyrinthto be recognised internationally, andthe Award affirmsall the passion and hard work that went into writing it. By celebrating the quality and innovation of self-published novels, the Eyelands Book Award showcases its forward-thinking and inclusive approach to the literary world. It’s a privilege to be part of this prestigious recognition.
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2. Dancing the Labyrinth was my debut novel and to receive an Award for it, acknowledges my voice on the page and the stories I wish to write. I have received other awards and distinction for my theatre work: writing, and notably directing, The Women’s Jail Project, as well presentations and papers delivered at conferences and events.
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3. The seed of this novel came from a deeply personal question: How, as a mother, can I raise my son to be a decent human being? The unspoken part of that question, of course, is: “in a patriarchal society.” In Australia, where domestic violence rates continue to rise, I felt a sense of accountability – not just as a mother, but as someone contributing to the next generation. As a theatre writer, I was surprised when the idea presented as a novel. I decided to embrace this and, having planned to spend a year in Crete, began writing there. At the time, I knew nothingof the Minoans, so I was delighted to find myself walking the ancient paths of this matriarchal society. The more I researched, the more the narrative emerged.The novel became dual time, and it was satisfying learning aboutan area of women’s history I was ignorant of, and then use this knowledge to feed into the contemporary sections of the novel. I couldn’t have written this book anywhere else – Crete is a place of incredible strength and inspiration.The land itself breathes stories.
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4. Winning this prize is deeply affirming – it’s like the Muses handing me a little note that says, ‘Keep going, you’re on the right path.’ Writing can be a solitary, doubt-riddled process, so recognition through this Award celebrates the heart, soul and vulnerability integral to my creative process.
On a broader level, it’s heartening to see self-published works being acknowledged for their quality and innovation. Awards like this help shift perceptions, opening doors for indie authors and celebrating the diversity of voices in the literary world. For me personally, it supports my dream of writing layered and ambitious stories that contribute in some way to society, and to trust that the stories I want to write have a place in the world.
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5. I have recently released the sequel – Delphi, to great acclaim, and feel for the time being, Cressida’s story and healing is complete. My next project is a memoir of when I lived in Crete and wrote Dancing the Labyrinth:
What is the outcome of awakening a persona unhindered by constraints of known behaviour, established expectations or obligations? Where the shift and sway of the cloak of responsibility to a different rhythm enables a capacity to listen without prejudice to one’s heart. For one year I lived encased in a foreign terrain of body and spirit, and it is an analytical plungeinto its potential influence onmy creative process that forms this narrative.
Notwithstanding, this memoir could also be read as a travelogue of Crete. Pick your poison.
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PAUL W.B. MARSDEN (Wales) HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR UNPUBLISHED Darkness in 1984
1 I am thrilled to have won Historical Fiction Unpublished Prize. When you write you don’t write to win prizes. You write because you have the passion inside to create. As Albert Camus said, you live twice by creating, whether that is writing, art or music. But, it does make a world of difference to your self confidence to be validated and recognised by Eyelands, especially as it is an international award. With so many writers from different cultures and native languages it feels like an even greater recognition.
My book, Darkness in 1984, was a full-on commitment, including visiting the North Wales cottage, where George Orwell stayed with Arthur Koestler at Christmas 1945. An English writer, born in India staying with a Hungarian writer in Wales!
I am so grateful to Mr and Mrs Brown, the owners of Bwlch Ocyn cottage, for letting me look inside and especially looking through the window of Arthur’s study, hidden behind the fireplace!
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2. This is the first prize I have received for a novel and the most important one to date.
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3. I have always been fascinated by writers meeting writers. What do they talk about? Do they share ideas? Are they jealous of each other? Do they steal ideas?! When I heard of the tale that George Orwell stayed with Arthur Koestler at Christmas in 1945, I thought there has to be a good story in it! And there was!
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4. Surprise! Joy! Relief! It means that someone else likes what I have written and, more importantly, someone who is a professional has judged it worthy.
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5. I have finished writing ‘Making A Moveable Feast’ which is the ‘Hemingway Tapes in Paris’ of the daily conversations of 1922 between Hadley, Hem, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes and all the other members of the Lost Generation. I am seeking a publisher or I may self publish as an ebook. A sequel has mostly been drafted of the Hemingways in 1923 as they visited Italy, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.
Thank you Eyelands!
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TIMOTHY JAY SMITH (France) NOVELS PUBLISHED Istanbul Crossing
1. It feels great, of course! It’s also reaffirming. It impliesthat I have readers who like my work and my stories, I’m especially glad to win an ‘international’ book contest because my books are set around the world: Istanbul, a Greek island, Warsaw, Jerusalem, elsewhere where I’ve lived or spent enough time to portray the setting with authenticity. It’s a challenge nevertheless, so I’m always glad when an international committee feels that I’ve succeeded on that score.
2. No, it’s not, though an EyelandsBook Award is certainly a coveted one. For novels, I’ve also won or placed in the Faulkner-Wisdom Writing Competition, the Lambda Literary Awards, the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the DeGroot Literary Prize), and others.I also write stage plays and screenplays, including spec scripts and adaptations of mynovels. Altogether, I’ve won or placed in 100+ writings contests.
3. My partner and I have been going to the same Greek village on the island of Lesvos for the last 20 years. By happenstance, our village was Ground Zero for the refugee crisis peaking in 2015-2017. In one twelve-month period, an estimated 500,000 refugees landed on the beach adjacent to our village of 1500 year-round residents.
When I start a novel, I first decide on what pressing issue of our timesthat I want to illuminate for my readers. I’ve written about human trafficking, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and what the fall of communism meant for ordinary families in Eastern Europe. I decided I wanted to write a novel highlighting the refugee crisis through the story of one or two refugees.
That book, Fire on the Island, ultimately became more of an homage to Greece than a refugee story. That’s understandable. My first job after college was in Greece and I fell in love with it. Ultimately, I would spend some 7 years of my life in the country. So what Fire on the Island became was a story about how the villagers responded to the refugees, and how the refugees reignited conflicts among the villagers that went back 100 years.
When I finished Fire on the Island, I still wanted to write a refugee story. I realize that I could describe every step a refugee would take once he or she arrived on Greece’s shore to make their way to northern Europe. What I didn’t know was how the refugees made their way to Istanbul to get on a raft to make the dangerous crossing to Greece.
I went to Istanbul to find out. I hired a young Syrian refugee who worked for an organization helping other refugees by providing various social services. I asked him to show me Istanbul from the refugees’ perspective. It turned out that he was also a people smuggler. That is to say, he survived by helping other refugees make the crossing to Greece. Though he wasn’t gay like my main character in Istanbul Crossing, he was still the inspiration for that character in terms of his compassion and willingness to take risks to help others.
4. I have a new publisher, Leapfrog Press, who plans to reprint Fire on the Island. That’s scheduled to be released on April 29th and I am working on some edits to it. I also have a challenging new novel in mind. It would be my first book set in America. I’m 16th generation American and for most of my life I’ve been proud of that. Lately, I’ve become less so. I’m at the very beginning stages of writing a novel that questions what is the legacy of those 16 generations.
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REV PHILIPS (USA) POETRY UNPUBLISHED Waiting for Godot in the blue Corolla
1. I am honored and pleased to be recognized in this international assembly of poets and writers. Thank you.
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2. I have been writing since I was seven and publishing in many poetry journals, but since I retired from full-time work, at last I have time to write more, send more work out into the world, and enter some contests. This past year I was nominated for two Pushcart poetry awards. I have been a finalist many times, including last year’s Eyelids Book Award for my previous collection, “Wrestling With the Angel”, published last Fall by Wipe and Stock Publishers. I have won First Prizes in The Letter Review Poetry Contest (2023), the Westmoreland (PA) Arts and Heritage Festival Poetry Contest (2022), the Lincoln (CA) Poetry Contest (2022), The Princemere Poetry Contest (2021), and the WOMR/WFMR Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest (MA) (2022, plus a couple of second prizes and honorable mentions/shortlists.
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3. One of my recurring themes is spiritual exploration, in the widest sense. Like many poets I revisit my particular story to trace its meanings and possibilities, as well as parsing the wider world for meanings, for some threads of transcendence, joy, and justice.
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4. It is a nice affirmation that some people far beyond my circle find the work worthy, enjoyable, and ready to be shared more widely. I love the human response to words sent out hopefully, like bread on the waters, not knowing whether anyone will hear or resonate with them. I am grateful to those who lend their expertise and time and care to judging and editing poets’ work.
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5. I have a third chapbook coming out from Finishing Line Press this coming Fall: “Sailing To the Edges”, containing a long narrative poem about the voyage of Amundsen to first explore Antarctica on the ship Belgica. I am also working on a second collection: “Memos To the Great Attractor”. I write every day, so there’s no telling what might come forth next!
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JIMMY TINDEL (India) SPECIAL DISTINCTION (novels unpublished) The Lost Vimana
1. I feel very great after winning contest because I didn’t expect that I am 16-17 year old and I just upload my book and win I am just wordless.
2. It is my first prize and I like it so much it is inspiration for me to write more books
3. the inspiration of my book is our Hindu religion refrences and books and scriptures.
4. It means alot so much I can’t even express it I am so happy thank you eyeland book awards.
5. In future I am gonna write one book on self help or this part continues
The contest runs from January 20th through April 20th, 2025
The theme of the contest this year is «2025»
First prize: 500 euros
All the stories of the short list will be published & released through amazon.com & strangedays books.
Entry fee: 10 €, (15 per 2 stories, 20 euro per 3 stories)
Judges: Writers of the short list vote for the grand prize winner
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RULES OF THE CONTEST
* Theme of the contest: 2025. We want stories inspired from this year
*Entries must be short stories, of any genre, maximum length is 3, 000 words and must be previously unpublished in a book. Entries must be in English.
* The contest closes at midnight UTC on 20th of April
*This is an international contest. There is no restriction such as nationality etc of the author, but you have to be 18 years old on the 20th of January 2025 to enter the contest otherwise parental permission is needed.
* No eyelands.gr or strange days books’editor, judge, or relative of them, is allowed to enter.
*Writers of the short list will vote for the grand prize winner, to be announced on June, 20, 2025
*Voting for the best story is obligatory for the writers otherwise their story will not be published.
* Copyright of manuscripts remains to the author.
* In addition to the story being published on http://www.eyelands.gr, the author’s acceptance of the prize gives eyelands.gr the right to include the story in the anthology that will appear in book form.
Entry grants permission to include the shortlisted stories in the book.
PRIZES
First prize is 500 euros, plus a Greek translation of the first prize winning story, published online on eyelands.gr
All the shortlisted stories –no more than 20- will be published in the anthology.
All the shortlisted writers will also get a free copy of the book!
Click the «buy now» button. Fill the description with: EISSC
Entry fee is 10 euros per story
*Email your story without your name
*An email confirmation that your entry has been received will be sent within three days after receiving your e-mail
*We don’t accept postal entries
* We do accept simultaneous submissions
* Every writer can submit up to three stories but only one story per writer will be shortlisted/published
* Name and address of the author should appear only in the body of the email
*The title of your story can be anything other than “2025”
Eyelands.gr launched its first international short story contest in 2010. We launched 10 consecutive contests till 2020. And after a break here we are again with the 11th Eyelands Inernational Short Story Contest!
How does it feel to be the grand prize winner of an international book contest?
I’m thrilled to be the grand prize winner of the Eyelands awards. This is my first time winning a contest outside of North America, and the fact that the contest is based in Greece, the birthplace of Western literature, is mind-blowing to me.
How did you hear about the contest?
I Googled contests that accept short story collections.
When did you start writing?
I always had an interest in reading when I was young. I never thought of the books I read as “literature,” or of having any kind of point beyond absorbing me into a good story. I started writing when I was in my early twenties, (bad) poetry at first, then short stories. I was terrible, so decided to take classes and workshops in university, and have been writing steadily ever since.
I can see from your bio that you have won a lot of distinctions for your writings. Is this the first time that one of your stories will be translated in another language
Yes! This blows my mind.
You wrote an excellent book. What was the inspiration for ‘’Pagodas of the Sun–Japan Stories’’?
I lived and worked in Japan from the late 1990’s to the early 2000’s as an ESL teacher. I ended up marrying a Japanese woman and we returned to Canada, and now have biracial twin daughters. After my return to Canada, I was inspired by the things I saw and did in Japan and wanted to write stories that captured some of my real and imagined experiences there. I read a book of stories by Mary Yukari Waters called “The Laws of Evening” which was set in Japan and covered different time periods through Japanese history, and I wondered if I might be able to also write stories like that, but from varied perspectives and with more of a focus on intercultural elements.
If this short story collection were to be adapted for a movie script what kind of movie do you think it would be?
The stories are told from varied points of view (Western, Japanese, male, female, adult, child, inanimate objects) and different time periods (the 1920’s, 1940’s, 1990’s, and modern day). Some are funny, some are surreal, some are dramatic, and some build tension and suspense, so it’s difficult to hone in on a specific movie genre. But the one thing the stories all have in common is that they strive to speak to the universal condition of connections and to the same sense of place, longing, fear, and the need to belong, so I could see this book being a similar kind of movie as Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” which was based on several Raymond Carver short stories.
How do you feel with the idea that your book will be translated in Greek?
This blows my mind. I have published short stories in literary journals over the years (8 from this collection have been published so far) but this is my first book publication. The collection has yet to be published in English, so getting my first book published in Greek first is a unique and thrilling step in my journey as writer.
Have you ever visited Greece?
No. It has been a lifelong dream of mine and my wife’s to visit Greece. Who knows, maybe we can come when the book launches!
How do you feel with the idea you will be the judge for Eyelands Books Awards 2025?
It is a thrill and honor to be asked to judge next year’s Eyelands Book Awards. I’m looking forward to giving back to the contest and to discovering new voices.
Can you tell us more about your recently finished novel which has also to do with Japan?
My novel, “Sea of Clouds,” is set during the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. It’s about an opium-addicted American anthropologist who rescues an orphaned Japanese baby form the earthquake and ends up walking with her 70 miles from Tokyo to Mount Fuji across the devastated region to try to get her to her father. It’s based on true events covering the daysfollowing the 1923 Kantoearthquake, and it took me ten years to research and write.
What are your writing plans for the future?
I’m currently working on my second novel about a youngmanwho, after discovering the mother who abandoned him as a child has terminal cancer, flees with her and his sister to Miami and tries to sell $200,000 worth of stolen drugs to pay for experimental surgery that may save her life.
GRAHAM ARNOLD
G. S. Arnold has an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and works at a career college in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in literary journals such as The Malahat Review, Event Magazine, Ninth Letter, Asia Literary Review, Glimmer Train, Prairie Fire, and The Masters Review. Along with receiving numerous Toronto, Ontario and Canada Arts Council grants as well as a Pushcart and a Journey Prize nomination, his stories have been short or long listed in contests such as the Writer’s Union of Canada Short Prose competition, the 2019 CBC short story award, the international Bridport Prize for short stories, and the Masters Review Short Story Anthology. He has recently finished his debut novel “Sea of Clouds,” set during the 1923 Tokyo earthquake
Few days ago we were glad to announce the finalists of Eyelands Book Awards 2024. Here you can see a brief bio of our finalists.Names appearance order by the date of submissions. Congratulations & Good luck to all!
Prize winners to be announced on December 30, 2024
NOVELS UNPUBLISHED
The Defection and Subsequent Resurrection of Nikolai Pushkin – Ken Pisani
USA
Ken Pisani is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and member of the Writers Guild of America West. His debut novel, AMP’D, published by St. Martin’s Press, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. AMP’D also won the Eyelands Grand Prize in 2022. Ken optioned his second work of fiction, the mystery novella 4 Corners, for television. He’s also contributed fiction and nonfiction to Huffington Post, Literary Hub, Salon, Publishers Weekly, Washington Independent Review of Books, Carve, Cedar Hills Press, The Writer, and the anthology More Tonto Short Stories, published in the U.S. and U.K. He recently completed a new novel, Days Are Here Again (publication forthcoming). Visit kenpisani.com for more.
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Cassandra Moon and the Murders in the Olive Groves – Maddie Grigg
UK
Maddie Grigg is the pen name of freelance journalist and former local newspaper editor Margery Hookings, from Dorset, England.
As Margery, she writes features for local magazines and promotes the annual Bridport Literary Festival.
As Maddie, she writes a weekly column for The People’s Friend magazine, which came about ten years ago after the editor discovered her blog.
Maddie (and Margery) has a great fondness for Corfu, where she lived for twelve months in 2012. She published a book, Good Morning Corfu: A Year on a Greek Island, about her grown-up gap year.
Obsessed with Greek mythology since reading Enid Blyton’s Tales of Long Ago as a child, she won a place at university as a mature student to study classics and ancient history at Masters level. But she was overwhelmed by academia and brilliant young students and quietly dropped out instead of completing her dissertation.
After regrouping, she began studying in 2019 for an MA in creative writing with The Open University. She loved the experience and decided to combine the new tools in her writer’s armoury with her passion for ancient Greece. The cosy crime novel, Cassandra Moon and The Murders in the Olive Groves, is the result.
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Beauty – Rena Rauch
Canada
I was born and raised in the city of George along South Africa’s scenic Garden Route. Living here instilled an early love of literature in me, fuelled by writers like J.M. Coetzee, A.S. Byatt, and the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Antjie Krog, and N.P. van Wyk Louw. In my final year of high school, I won a prestigious essay competition honoring C.J. Langenhoven—one of South Africa’s literary giants—a milestone that solidified my passion for writing.
I pursued Journalism and Literary Theory before completing a MPhil in Applied Ethics at the University of Stellenbosch, specialising in biomedical ethics. The research for my thesis sparked my dream of writing a novel, but the demands of running a business, extensive travel, serving on the University of Kwazulu-Natal’s Ethics Committee, guest lecturing, and raising children with my husband, a busy surgeon, left little time for such creative pursuits.
It was only after relocating to Canada 15 years ago, settling in a farmhouse with a view of the expansive Manitoba prairies, that I returned to this dream. There, cocooned in the solace of nature, in the deafening silence with my two cats by my side, my novel Beauty was born—a journey I will treasure forever.
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The Whore Saint – Mohsen Estesnaei
Canada
Mohsen Estesnaei is a mysticism scholar with over 30 years of experience in the field. He has authored three books, with his second publication, “The Depth of Vision,” having earned four international book awards. His third book, “The Whore Saint,” remains unpublished but has already garnered four 5-star reviews from Readers’ Favorite and a 5-star review from the Literary Titan Book Award, highlighting its potential for success. Currently, Mohsen is seeking a traditional publishing house to collaborate with and bring his latest work to a wider audience.
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A Generation of Leaves – Alexander Matheou
Malaysia
Alexander Matheou is a humanitarian worker, a traveller, and a writer. In 2016, while supporting the response to the migration crisis in Greece, he researched the history of how his Greek grandfather died in the resistance in Central Greece in 1943, and he published the story on Amazon. He then spent four years researching and writing a novel: A Generation of Leaves, loosely based on family history, which follows the adventures of three very different brothers in the Balkan Wars in Greece in 1912/1913. Each summer, Alexander stays on the Island of Aegina, where in 2022 and 2023, he wrote Aegina Tales, a collection of short stories that weave an ancient spell from the abandoned goddess, Aegina, into the lives of people living on the island in the summer of 2023. Alexander is currently Regional Director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, based in Malaysia, and is responsible for coordinating humanitarian work in thirty-eight countries.
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HASHTAG: Stole your husband – Jo McClelland Phillips
Australia
Ontario-born Jo McClelland-Phillips is a neurodivergent, queer writer whose creative nonfiction has been featured in TIME, USA TODAY, Fairfax Media, and Scary Mommy. She is the winner of the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award and a two-time resident at Varuna: The National Writers’ House in Australia. When she is not working as Community Development Coordinator for Headspace, Jo studies for her master’s degree in creative writing at Macquarie University and watches old Hollywood movies and baking competitions. She lives under a green roof (she pretends is Green Gables) with a bookseller, a nine-year-old, and a very tolerant cat.
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Freeze frame – Dawn-Michelle Baude
France
Dawn-Michelle Baude is an international author, educator and Senior Fulbright Scholar. Among her publications are seven volumes of poetry, two volumes of translations, two art catalogues, three communications books, one children’s book and a ghost-written international bestseller. She has published articles in various Condé Nast magazines and sites, the Los Angeles Times and Huffington Post; art reviews and criticism in ArtCritical and White Hot; literary reviews in San Francisco Chronicle and American Book Review, among others; and poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction in physical and digital publications. Excerpts from her autofiction, FREEZE FRAME, have won several distinctions, including First Prize in Nonfiction at the Tucson Festival of Books. She earned her Ph.D. at University of Illinois – Chicago and has taught writing at Bard College, American University of Paris, American University of Beirut, Alexandria University (Egypt), and John Cabot University (Rome). After briefly making her home in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she was a contributing writer at the Las Vegas Weekly, in 2022, she settled in Provence, France, where she founded the editing business Verve.
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Strigorov’s Forest – Tomislav Takac
Serbia
TomislavTakač was born in 1988 in the city of Subotica, Serbia. Since early childhood, he has been fascinated with everything strange and he eventually became something of a walking encyclopedia. He started writing novels and short stories five years ago and hasn’t stopped since. He currently works in a women’s sock factory.
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NOVELS PUBLISHED
Anatomy of a Half Truth – Purbasha Ghosh
India
If life were a manuscript, Purbasha Ghosh is a work in progress. The inciting incident of her story was a turbulent childhood, spent in remote fringes of rural India, where her father’s postings, took the family. Relocations and recurrent new beginnings frequently upset her emotional status quo.
In the plagiarised, messy first draft of her life, outlined according to the formulaic plot structure of societal expectations, Ghosh was an Architect and a Planner. Recently, upon realising the middle of her life was sagging under the weight of corporate servitude, she has undertaken a large-scale structural edit of her narrative and consequently, is in a state of flux. Purbasha is currently decluttering those off-the-shelf techniques and hacks, advertised by the 24×7 go-getter culture, which she had previously employed, to force-fit her chronicle into pre-fab modules of success. She intends to discovery-write the rest of her saga.
Ghosh is a solo mother, and the setting of the present act of her unfolding tale, is Kolkata.
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Istanbul Crossing – Timothy Jay Smith
France
From a young age, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that’s taken him around the world many times. En route, he found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that saw him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, represent the U.S. at the highest levels of foreign governments, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.
Tim brings the same energy to his writing. As a result, he’s won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays. Fire on the Island (2020) won the Gold Medal in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel, and his screenplay adaptation of it was named Best Indie Script by WriteMovies. The Fourth Courier (2019), was a finalist for Best Gay Mystery in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Previously, he won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the de Groot Prize) for his novel, Checkpoint. Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of 2012’s Best Books.
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The Conquest of Kailash – Inderjeet Mani
Thailand
Inderjeet Mani is an Indian-born former US professor and scientist based in Thailand. His novel Toxic Spirits (now in its second edition) drew from his experiences as a volunteer teacher working with hill-tribes in Thailand’s Golden Triangle. Reactions to the novel have included “A complex and enthralling international intrigue with a treasure of remarkable detail” (Frederick Barthelme) and “Mani tells his story in taut, highly descriptive prose, capturing his Thai setting’s cornucopia of sights and tastes” (Kirkus Reviews). In addition to his new novel The Conquest of Kailash , Mani has also published six scholarly books, a hundred-odd scientific papers, and nearly fifty shorter literary pieces published in
3:AM Magazine, Aeon, Apple Valley Review, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Cargo Literary, Drunken Boat, Eclectica, Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing, Litbreak, New World Writing, Nimrod, PANK, Short Fiction Journal, Slow Trains, Streetlight, Storgy, The Deccan Herald, The Hindu, Unsung
Stories, Word Riot, and other venues. Mani studied creative writing at Penn (with Carlos Fuentes), Bread Loaf (with Patricia Hampl) and Harvard (with Paul Harding). His affiliations have included Georgetown University (Associate Professor), Yahoo (Senior Director), Cambridge University (Visiting Fellow), MITRE (Senior Principal Scientist), Brandeis University (Visiting Scholar), and MIT (Research Affiliate). Website: https://tinyurl.com/inderjeetmani
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Seasons of Four Faces – Benjamin Kwakye
USA
Benjamin Kwakye is the author of several works of fiction and poetry. His work has won several awards, including the African Literature Association’s Book of the Year Award for Creative Writing, two regional Commonwealth Writers Prizes for Best First Book and Best Book, and the IPPY Gold Award for Adult Multicultural Fiction. His other awards include the Afrique Newsmagazine WEB DuBois Award for Literature, an indie book award for poetry, and the Illumination Book Award for Poetry (Bronze). He was a finalist for the Snyder Poetry Prize and the 2023 Eyelands Book Awards (unpublished novel). His novel, The Clothes of Nakedness, was adapted for radio as a BBC Play of the Week. Kwakye was born in Accra, Ghana and holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He currently lives with his family (Margaret, Nana, Jeede and Kristodia) in Michigan (United States), where he works as legal counsel.
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The village of Luka JP Roarke
USA
JP Roarke was a trial lawyer for about 30 years, as well as a mentor to several younger attorneys. He began writing after completing trial in a tragic death case, and has since written two novels and several short stories. His short stories include The Tellings Of Julio Rivera and Interregnum, each of which were published in the US. Interregnum was also selected in the Stories of Inspiration anthology and a winner in America’s Sixfold competition, where it was described by Roarke’s own competition as “devastatingly sad but beautifully written.”
Roarke’s writings have been published both in Europe and the United States, and honored in several international competitions. He explains that his Eyelands entry, From The Village Of Lucca, was inspired by two real life women who while still children were involved in a terrible Lord of the Flies experience. The British commentator Juliette Foster (now of the BBC), describes Lucca’s principal characters as “… honorable, decent women, emblematic of how the good in the world can win out against wickedness, even when the odds of success aren’t necessarily great,” and adds that the novel “seamlessly moves between countries and centuries..[and] …once read will never be forgotten…Everything about it works.”
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The Zygan Emprise – Y S Pascal
USA
Y S Pascal is a pediatrician, journalist, and co-author of the Award-Winning Sammy Greene Thriller Series with Dr. Deborah Shlian. Pascal is a member of the Writer’s Guild of America West, and has been published in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, and Tribune International. She is also the author of several pediatric research papers and two non-fiction books on health administration, as well as the children’s book, “High Hopes Big Dreams”. Pascal is also the author and producer of a short film about her family’s tragedy in 1922 Anatolia, The Full Catastrophe, https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/the-full-catastrophe-short-film. Pascal and her husband were born in Greece and live in Los Angeles, close to her three wonderful adult children and two sweet granddogs. Her fourth novel in the Sammy Greene series, Dirty Deeds, is due out in February at https://www.amazon.com
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Now Beacon, Now Sea – Steven Hendricks
USA
Steven Hendricks is writer, book-artist, and teacher in Olympia, Washington. Hendricks’s first novel, Little is Left to Tell, was published by Starcherone Books in 2014 and reissued by Campanile Books in 2016. His new novel, Now Beacon, Now Sea, was published by Kernpunkt Press in 2024. Hendricks moved out west from Nebraska to attend The Evergreen State College, then completed his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been a member of the faculty at Evergreen since 2002.
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POETRY UNPUBLISHED
Seang (Hungering) – Anne Casey
Australia
Originally from the west of Ireland, Anne Casey is a Sydney-based, internationally award-winning poet/writer and author of sixpoetry collections. A journalist, magazine editor, media communications director, legal author and academic for 30 years, her writing is widely published and anthologised, ranking in leading national daily newspaper, The Irish Times’ Most Read.
Anne has won literary prizes in Ireland, Australia, the UK, USA, Canada, Hong Kongand India, most recently theAmerican Association of Australasian Literary Studies Poetry Prize, American Writers Review Prize, Henry Lawson Poetry Prize and iWoman Global Award forLiterature. She holds a law degree and a PhD in archival poetry and poetics of resistance. Annewas awardedthe nationalDistinguished Creative Arts Doctoral Student Award2024 (1st Prize) by the Deans and Directors of Creative Arts in Australian universities for her doctoral work, which includes her unpublished poetry collection entitled ‘Seang (Hungering)’.
Anne has served on numerous editorial advisory boards, as Vice President of Voices of Women arts alliance and as a founding board member of the Prankqueans, an Irish-Australian women’s arts collective, twice commended in New South Wales Parliament for their cultural contribution in Australia.
anne-casey.com @1annecasey.
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Waiting for Godot in the blue Corolla – Jennifer M Phillips
USA
Jennifer M Phillips authored the poetry collection Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf & Stock, 2024), and chapooks Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com 2020), A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). A bi-national immigrant, she lives gratefully in Barnstable, Cape Cod on Wampanoag ancestral lands. She is a bonsai-grower, gardener, painter, was a long-time HIV-AIDS and hospital chaplain and Episcopal priest.
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Tidings from the Pelagos: a Polyphony -Jena Woodhouse
Australia
Born and based in Queensland, Australia, Jena Woodhouse has also experienced transcultural status, being a non-native speaker of several European languages, and having spent time in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, the Former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, and more than a decade living and working in Greece. She is the author of twelve published books and chapbooks across several genres, including seven poetry titles.
Background to my unpublished
poetry collection, Tidings from the Pelagos Greece is, quite simply, the love of my life: a passion that will inspire me to the end of my days. I venerate the country, its culture ancient and modern, and its people, the bearers of that culture. One lifetime can scarcely suffice to adequately express all I feel and all I owe to the sustained encounter with a topos and living culture that is not the one I was born into, but one where I came to feel at home.
The poems collected in Tidings from the Pelagos are a response to my encounters with Aegean Greece, and a reciprocal offering in return for the manifold joys and revelations bestowed on me by Greece over the past four decades since I first set foot there. actualising youthful dreams of a living, vibrant cosmos whose archaeology, mythology, art, philosophy, and physical beauty had beckoned me from afar.
Photo : Anna Jacobson
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But God…Hope that Never Fails – Vernae Coffee
USA
Vernae Coffee is a Christ Follower who has written prose, poetry, and songs since experiencing at a young age how words inspire the human spirit. She is one of seven children and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta, Georgia. Vernae is a graduate of Berea College and East Tennessee State University, and currently works as a School Psychologist with Rutherford County Schools in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She has committed her personal and professional life to encouraging others to see their obstacles as opportunities and their pain as purposeful.
Vernae was selected as a 2021 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellow, and a 2019 Eyelands Book Award’s Finalist for her unpublished children’s book, Teddy Wet My Bed. Vernae is the 2017 NTCE and Penguin Random House recipient of the Maya Angelou Poetry Grant Award.
But God…Hope That Never Fails is the debut of Vernae’s first Poetry collection. She is exhilarated to share how God’s love and acceptance can be a place of peace,healing, and transformation.
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If the birds should hear this – Dike Okoro
USA
Dike Okoro is a poet/scholar and graduate of the MFA program for creative writing at Chicago State University and the PhD in English program at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He studied poetry under Gwendolyn Brooks, former poet laureate of Illinois/USA. His poetry has previously appeared in many publications including: Callaloo, Pure Slush, Commuterlit.com, Fiyah, Bellingham Review, Nzuri, Fingernails Across the Chalkboard, Witness Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review,Universal Oneness, and Full of Crow. A professor of English at a college in the US, Okorois the recipient of numerous fellowships/awards, including a Sam Walton Fellowship, a Newberry Scholar-in-Residence, a Gwendolyn Brooks graduate assistantship for research, and a Ken Saro-Wiwa Senior Research Fellowship. He is the author of the poetry collections Homecoming: New and Selected Poems, Dance of the Heart, and In the Company of the Muse, and the editor of We Have Crossed Many Rivers: New Poetry from Africa, shortlisted by humanrightscareers.com (UK) as one of 5 Vocal Human Rights Poetry Books inspiring change. He has been invited to read his poetry in Kenya, South Africa, Norway, Pakistan, India, Canada, and Nigeria, and has been a finalist for the Iliad Poetry award and the Cecile De Jongh Literary Award.
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POETRY PUBLISHED
Even the Dog Was Quiet – Margaret R. Sáraco
USA
Margaret R. Sáraco, author of two poetry collections, If There Is No Wind and Even the Dog Was Quiet (Human Error Publishing), has received three Honorable Mentions in Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contests, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was a semi-finalist in the inaugural Laura Boss Poetry Narrative Book Contest. Margaret and her filmmaker won first prize in Moving Words Film Festival for her poem, “Dear Rorschach.” Her short stories and poetry appear in journals and anthologies including Voices in Italian Americana, All About My Mother, Book of Matches, Greening the Earth (Penguin), Kerning, and S/He Speaks 2: Voices of Women, Trans & Nonbinary Folx. Margaret is a spoken word artist and writing workshop leader. She has appeared in video, Instagram, and podcast projects and is a poetry editor for Platform Review. More info. at https://margaretsaraco.com
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Hypocrisy has a Face and Other Writings – Dina Kafiris
UK
Born in Sydney to Greek parents, Dina Kafiris earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Western Sydney, during which she studied Ethics (Philosophy) at Deree–The American College of Greece. She subsequently moved to the UK. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Mōnolith: Visuals & Verses, Wild Court, American, British and Canadian Studies, The Journal, Nea Synteleia, Horizon Review and Odyssey Magazine, among others. She was a regular member of and collaborator with the Corais group of the Greek literary review Nea Synteleia (New End of the World), under the Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis.Her poetry chapbook,The Blinding Light Circling Elpida, in one act, was published by Original Plus in 2014 and is from her forthcoming trilogy 21st-century Modern Greece: The First Decade. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds and a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Bangor.She was Writer in Residence and Guest Lecturer at Kingston University London.
Kafiris is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
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Banana Girl -Paris Rosemont
Australia
Paris Rosemont is an Asian-Australian poet and author of poetry collection Banana Girl (WestWords, 2023), shortlisted by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for the 2024 Mary Gilmore Award for a first volume of poetry, the Society of Women Writers NSW Inc. Poetry Book Awards 2024, and longlisted for the International Poetry Book Awards 2024 (UK).
Paris’s poetry has been widely published and has won awards both locally and internationally, including first place in the Hammond House Publishing Origins Poetry Prize 2023 (UK), second place in the Whitsundays Literary Heart Awards Poetry Prize 2024, shortlisted for the International Proverse Poetry Prize 2023 & 2024 (Hong Kong) and longlisted for the New Writers Poetry Competition 2023 & 2024 (UK).
Paris takes delight in bringing her poetry to life through multi-disciplinary modes of expression, including theatrical performance, and has featured at events including the Red Dirt Poetry Festival 2024 (Alice Springs) and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2023.
I have decided to remain vertical – Gayelene Carbis
Australia
GayeleneCarbis is an award-winning Australian/Irish/Chinese/Cornish writer of poetry, prose, short film, and plays.Gayelene’s first poetry collection,Anecdotal Evidence (Five Islands Press) was awarded Finalist, International Best Book Award, U.S. Her second book of poetry, I Have Decided to Remain Vertical (Puncher and Wattmann) has been Finalist /Distinguished Favourite in numerous international poetry book awards in 2023 and 2024 (U.K.; U.S.) and most recently awarded Highly Commended in the NSW Society of Women Writers’ Poetry Book Award 2024. Her book is currently Finalist in the Eyelands Poetry Book Award 2024 (Greece). Gayelene’s work has been widely published, performed and won/been finalist in poetry, prose, short film and playwriting awardsin Australia/overseas, including India, Malaysia, Nepal, Edinburgh, Oxford, New York, andCanada, where she was awarded a Banff Residency Scholarship in Poetry.She teaches Creative Writing in universities and at Sandybeach (Sandringham) and works as a writing mentor and manuscript assessor.She is currently working on two collections: prose poetry; and auto-fiction/memoir. Gayelene lives and works on the unceded land of the Boonwurrung people.
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Death Row Row Row Your Boat – Kurt Luchs
USA
Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com and https://www.facebook.com/kurt.luchs/) won a 2022 Pushcart Prize, a 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize, the 2021 Eyelands Book Award for Short Stories, and the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He is a Contributing Editor of Exacting Clam. His humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017), and his first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up (2021), are published by Sagging Meniscus Press, along with his newest poetry book, Death Row Row Row Your Boat (2024). Before turning his attention to poetry, nonfiction and fiction, he wrote humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He also wrote comedy for television (Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn) and radio (American Comedy Network). As a member of the sketch comedy act the Luchs Brothers he co-wrote and sang the often-bootlegged Sex Pistols parody single “Kill Me I’m Rotten” and its flipside, “Losing My Lunch Over You.” He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan”.
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SHORT STORY UNPUBLISHED
Black Crescent – Townsend Walker
USA
Townsend Walker draws inspiration from cemeteries, foreign places, violence and strong women. “3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies & other stories,”a short story collection, Deeds Publishing, 2018. “La Ronde,”a novella of linked stories, Truth Serum Press, 2015. Overone hundred short stories and poems published in literary journals. Two nominations for the PEN/O.Henry Award. He reviews for the “New York Journal of Books.” He teaches creative writing at Mount Tamalpais College on the San Quentin State Prison Campus. His website is https://www.townsendwalker.com.
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The House of Genyo and Other Stories – Terry Watada
Canada
Terry Watada is a writer living in Canada. He has 4 novels, 6 poetry books and a collection of short stories in print. His 6th poetry book, “The Mask”, was released in December 2023. His 4th novel, “Hiroshima Bomb Money”, became available in the fall of 2024.
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Oscillations of Humanity – Aalok Rathod
USA
Aalok Rathod is an emerging voice in contemporary literature, known for his introspective and thought-provoking explorations of human nature. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Aalok moved to the USA in 2016. Aalok holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and a Master’s in Media Management, a unique blend of disciplines that informs his storytelling with both depth and structure. Oscillations of Humanity marks his foray into literary fiction. His writing style blends poetic prose with keen social observations, drawing readers into a narrative that resonates across cultural boundaries. Beyond writing, Aalok has received critical acclaim for his chart-topping podcasts and award-winning films, cementing his place as a powerful voice in the world of media and storytelling. When not writing, Aalok lectures at universities and participates in global conferences on tech and finance. He currently resides in New York City, with his dog Ella
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A weaver’s way – Charles Osborne
UK
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Pagodas of the Sun—Japan Stories – G. S. Arnold
Canada
G. S. Arnold has an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and works at a career college in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in literary journals such as The Malahat Review, Event Magazine, Ninth Letter, Asia Literary Review, Glimmer Train, Prairie Fire, and The Masters Review. Along with receiving numerous Toronto, Ontario and Canada Arts Council grants as well as a Pushcart and a Journey Prize nomination, his stories have been short or long listed in contests such as the Writer’s Union of Canada Short Prose competition, the 2019 CBC short story award, the international Bridport Prize for short stories, and the Masters Review Short Story Anthology. He has recently finished his debut novel “Sea of Clouds,” set during the 1923 Tokyo earthquake.
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SHORT STORY PUBLISHED
Little Fortified Stories – Barbara Black
Canada
Barbara Black writes short and flash fiction, poetry and libretti. Her work has appeared in many publications and anthologies, including The Cincinnati Review, Geist, The Hong Kong Review and Bath Flash Fiction Award anthology 2020. Achievements include: Fiction Finalist, 2020 National Magazine Awards and Winner, 2017 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition. Barbara was shortlisted for the 2023 Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award and won First Prize in The Plaza Prizes Microfiction Contest and Second in their Flash Fiction category. Her debut book, Music from a Strange Planet, received the 2023 Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Award in Fiction, was a finalist in The Canadian Book Club Awards and won the international Wishing Shelf Book Award for Fiction. Her latest book, a recipient of the 2024 Firebird Book Award for Short Story, is Little Fortified Stories, a collection of micro and flash fiction. Barbara lives in Victoria, BC, Canada, where she gardens and loves to ride the twisties on her trusty Triumph motorcycle.
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Dolores and Other Sorrows – Denis Smyth Díaz
Belgium
Born in Madrid, Spain, to Spanish and British parents. I studied English linguistics and literature at university in Spain and France and moved to Belgium to pursue my day job in translating. I took up writing to pour out all the stories that had been forever flitting around in my head. Initially I wrote in Spanish, but I then switched to English as an experiment, and that was the language in which I ultimately published my first collection of short stories, Dolores and Other Sorrows. I have also worked as an editor for Irish poet Mary Kennelly, I am co-chair of the Brussels Writers Circle and I am now working on a novel and a second collection of short stories.
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Dead Dreams – Sandeep Kumar Mishra
India
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Truth or Dare – Nadia Kabir Barb
UK
Nadia Kabir Barb is a British Bangladeshi writer and journalist and the author of Truth or Dare, a collection of short stories (Renard Press 2023, Bengal Lights Books 2017) listed in ‘The Best of 2023’ by the Indie Press Network. Her stories have featured in various international literary journals and anthologies. Can You See Me was a winner of the Audio Arcadia short story competition. She was longlisted for the 2021 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews First Novel Award. Her poems have featured in Post Lib journal and visual verse.
Nadia has been a long standing columnist for the leading English language newspapers in Bangladesh, The Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune. She holds a BA Hons from SOAS, and an MSc from the London School of Economics and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has worked in the health and development sector in both the UK and Bangladesh.
She is the writer in residence 2024 for CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) RPG and is also a member of The Whole Kahani, a collective of British writers of South Asian origin.
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Occupations -Anna Mantzaris
USA
Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing Quarterly, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. She teaches writing in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.
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HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR UNPUBLISHED
A Greek Love Affair – Mary Irvine
Scotland, UK
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The Three and a Half Loves of Miss Lorelei Culpepper – Jean Tschohl Quinn
USA
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A Funny Thing (about Old Man Drought)’ – Steve Hawe
Australia
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Darkness in 1984 – Paul W. B. Marsden
Wales
Husband to Elena and dad to three grown up kids who make me so proud. I work in construction but I’m burning passion is being a writer. I have enjoyed a varied career as an anti-war member of parliament, director of an animal charity, security consultant, quality management professional and I dally in IT and AI. I have published technical construction book, local history books, poems, aphorisms and a literary history book – Entente Cordiale of 20 Writers in the 19th century.
I am absolutely delighted and honoured to be a finalist in the Eyelands Book Awards with Darkness in 1984 about the Christmas meeting, in 1945, between Arthur Koestler and George Orwell in North Wales that influenced his writing of 1984.
Recently I finished my next manuscript, Making A Moveable Feast, on the day to day conversations, in the first months of 1922 in Paris, between Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway that shaped his unique writing style. It is a story about the impact of the women of the era, not least, Hadley Richardson.
I am now planning my next ‘writers’ book!
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Museum of Forbidden Art – Jennifer Steil
France
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
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Boundaries Borders Crossings-One Lesbian Life 2.0 – Jill P. Strachan
USA
Jill P. Strachan was born in Athens, Greece and spent her childhood accompanying her US Foreign Service parents to postings around the world, including Pakistan, Egypt, and Sri Lanka. As a Third Culture Kid (TCK) she enjoys travelling and learning about other people. In 2016, she gave up grant writing for the pleasures of writing nonfiction, hanging out with her partner, playing tennis, walking her dog, and singing in Not What You Think, an a cappella group offering songs of social justice and humor. Her first book is Waterfalls, The Moon and Sensible Shoes – One Lesbian Life.
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Mercy’s View: Blackout – J.J. Maze
USA
J.J. Maze is an award-winning author as well as a singer, composer, and educator in Chicago. She was a runaway and high school dropout at age fifteen. After surviving some harrowing experiences on the streets, she toured internationally as a singer/songwriter for over a decade, then got her GED and went back to college as a performance major. She received her MM in classical vocal performance in 2008 from Northwestern University. Ms. Maze is on the faculty at Vandercook College of Music, a teaching artist for Ravinia Festival, and she is a highly sought-after vocal coach. J.J. remains an active part of the Chicago music scene. In her downtime, she likes nothing more than laughing with good friends and walking her two dogs, Bella and Lenny.
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HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR PUBLISHED
Today In Paradise – Andrew Corin
New Zealand
Andrew, a New Zealand trained doctor and award-winning author, has been working in General Practice since 1997. He is based in Tauranga, New Zealand, working full time as a primary care physician and clinical researcher with extensive experience in governance roles for health and community organisations.
Andrew has also had medical experience in Ireland, Kenya and the Philippines, including work for emergency relief and mission organisations.
He enjoys growing avocados on his small orchard and participating in as many outdoor activities with his family as possible in all his spare time!
Writing has been a delightful creative release for him, whether in the form of coaxing life out of a dry, academic article, or embracing the unpredictability of crafting fiction. Andrew’s first published work, a collection of short fiction stories titled This Old Stick was awarded as Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book awards of 2020. His debut novel, Today In Paradise, a historical fiction, has been awarded as a Finalist in the Eyelands Bood Awards 2024.
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FINAL APPROACH: My father and other turbulence – Mark Blackburn
UK
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Swim – Lisa Brace
UK
Lisa Brace is a British writer who combines writing novels with running her own business in the beautiful surroundings of West Sussex in the UK.
She has worked as a journalist and copywriter for over twenty years, giving her the chance to be nosy without getting into trouble.
Swim is her debut historical novel, her second, The Fastest Girl on Earth, is out summer 2025.
When not writing, and running writing retreats in the south of England, Lisa enjoys walking her dog, reading everything she can lay her hands on and baking elaborate cakes.
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Straight Enough – Lorinda Boyer
USA
Lorinda Boyer is a multi-award-winning author, and published poet. She lives with her wife, Sandy, and pup, Mollie, in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys writing, reading, running, and drinking far too much coffee.
Lorinda’s journey through fundamentalist Christianity, sexual addiction, and eventual self-acceptance unfolds in her memoir, Straight Enough. More than a coming-out story this is a coming-into story—coming into an authentic life and self.
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A Parthenon on our Roof – Peter Barber
UK
Peter Barber is an award-winning author who shares his love for Greece through humorous and heartfelt memoirs. A British native, Peter’s life took a dramatic turn when he reconnected with Alex, his fiery Greek wife, decades after their first meeting as teenagers. Trading the rainy skies of England for the sun-drenched beauty of Greece, Peter found himself immersed in a world of vibrant culture, passionate people, and endless adventures.
His books, including A Parthenon on Our Roof and A Parthenon in Pefki, combine laugh-out-loud moments with touching reflections on family, identity, and the quirks of Greek life. With a self-effacing sense of humour, Peter captures the essence of village life, the challenges of adapting to a new culture, and the universal joy of good food, strong coffee, and spirited conversation.
When he’s not writing, Peter splits his time between Greece and the UK, soaking in inspiration from his adopted home and the colourful characters around him—Alex, included! His stories celebrate the warmth of Greek hospitality and the enduring magic of love, laughter, and a little chaos.
Peter’s books are for anyone who dreams of escaping to Greece or simply loves a good story well told.
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CHILDREN’S BOOK UNPUBLISHED
Elemental – James Woods
UK
Born and raised in the East Midlands, UK, James Woods attended Nottingham Trent University where he achieved a degree in Business Studies. After graduating, he worked in the retail industry, while completing his first novel, Elemental, for which he is currently seeking representation. In 2024 he was shortlisted for the Marlow & Christie International Novel Prize.
James is passionate about creating new and overlapping worlds for his readers to inhabit. He is fascinated by the intricacies of building a magic system; the cultures it would drive, the relationships it would fuel, and its impact on our way of life. A regular sufferer of insomnia, James does most of his writing after midnight.
James currently lives in Leicestershire, UK, with his partner, 3 cats and a dog. He trains and competes in 4-way Formation Skydiving, in which he has achieved 4 National titles and represented the UK at 4 World Championships.
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Braveheart – Iryna Polishchuk
Ukraine
Iryna Polishchuk is a children books writer from Ukraine. She lives in Kyiv now. Iryna loves children and they love her too. She is sure that each child is unique and needs parents love and care.
She strongly believes that children literature still holds a high place in people’s lives all over the world. It is a significant tool to reveal children’s talents and self-actualize.
She writes kind and good stories to help children to grow up in a loving and caring for the environment.
Despite the horrible war in Ukraine, she continuous to write for children. Becauseit becomes more important to share universal human values such as love, friendship, wisdom, hope, helpfulness, honesty, unity with nature and a world at peace.
Her books are full of beauty and hope what we especially need in today’s troubled world.
Iryna feel blessed with supporting friends and family in her life.
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Starfish and Tide -Dinah Gay-Dorvil
USA
Dinah Dorvil is a seasoned educator with 19 years of experience, specializing in literacy and fostering a love of reading in children. With a decade teaching 2nd and 3rd grade- pivotal years for building strong readers- and a role as an Instructional Reading Coach, she has dedicated her career to empowering young minds and guiding teachers to create impactful learning experiences. Beyond the classroom, she channels her creativity into writing, narrating, and crafting presentations that resonate with diverse audiences.
Her creative endeavors often draw from life’s tidepools—moments of love, loss, and self-discovery—infusing her work with depth and relatability. Whether mentoring teachers, engaging parents, or crafting heartfelt stories, she is committed to inspiring growth, connection, and a lifelong passion for learning.
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CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHED
Bunky and the Summer Wish – Aleksandra Tryniecka
Poland
Aleksandra Tryniecka is an Assistant Professor at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland. Her speciality is literature, especially the nineteenth-century (Victorian) novel. She is the author of academic (Women’s Literary Portraits in the Victorian and Neo-Victorian Novel – 2023) and children’s books (Bunky and the Walms: The Christmas Story – 2021, Bunky and the Summer Wish – 2024). In her free time she writes poetry and stories in order to accommodate her life with the right words. She enjoys the nineteenth-century British literature, especially everything written by Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins. One of her favourite literary characters is the Cheshire Cat. Without a doubt, Bunky is also her favourite literary character! Bunky and his Friends not only live on the page’s of Aleksandra’s novels, but also in her reality! Bunky has a bunkyful YouTube channel with his all-year-round adventures:
He hopes to become every Reader’s friend and invite more peace, goodness, magic, empathy and nobility into our world.
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The Hampstead Terror -Kate Wiseman
UK
Kate was a late developer who finally got to university at the age of 38. That gave me the courage to try to achieve my dream of writing fiction. Since then I’ve been very lucky to have had 9 books for both adults and children published in 4 languages.
I love history and am a licensed mudlark. This gives me the right to search the foreshore of the Thames in London for historical artifacts. My love of Mudlarking inspired the Mudlark Mysteries, about a group of nineteenth-century teens who mudlark to survive in a tough and uncaring society. The Hampstead Terror is the second Mudlark Mystery. It centres around an urban myth that dangerous wild pigs lived in the sewers beneath Victorian London and it features toshers – mudlarking elite who hunted for treasure in the many miles of London’s underground sewers.
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Queen of the Mountain – TAK Erzinger
Switzerland
TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background.Her poetry has been featured by journals at Indiana University, Cornell University, McMaster University, the University of Baltimore and more. Erzinger’s poetry collection “At the Foot of the Mountain,” (Floricanto Press 2021), won the University of Indianapolis, Etchings Press Whirling Prize for 2021 for best nature poetry book and was a finalist at The International Book Awards 2022. It was also a finalist at the Willow Run Book Awards and Eyelands Book Awards. Her poetry collection “Tourist” (Sea Crow Press 2023) was released in April. Erzinger was awarded a spot by the Art Centre Padula, Artist in Residency Programme summer 2023.She lives on the foothills of the Alps in Switzerland with her husband and two cats.
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High Hopes Big Dreams – Yolanda S Pascal
USA
SEE BIO at novels published category
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Micahs Wish – Pamela S K Glasner and Judy Brulo,
USA and UK
Pamela S. K. Glasner is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, a critically-acclaimed author, and a social advocate. She has contributed to the Huffington Post, Cabaret Scenes Magazine, and several professional publications.
As the daughter of two senior citizens who were exploited by a stranger who insinuated himself into their lives, thereafter embezzling their life savings, Glasner produced Last Will and Embezzlement, her award-winning documentary movie starring Hollywood’s icon, the late Mickey Rooney. The film addresses the financial exploitation of the elderly.
Glasner earned her BA in English and secondary education as a Dean’s List student from Eastern Connecticut State University. And finally her honors,Masters in Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard University.
Ms. Glasner resides in rural Connecticut where she continues working on several new projects and advocating for those who don’t always have a voice of their own.
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Judy Brulo
Judy is an international award-winning children’s author and screenwriter with a special interest in conservation.
She grew up in Shepshed, Leicestershire (UK). After graduating from the Guildhall School of Music, London, she worked as a professional violist and teacher.
Her love of writing was inspired by grandchildren Kaia and Taio. To encourage them on their reading journey, she wrote short stories on almost a weekly basis, choosing topics she knew would grab their attention.
Judy lived in Cambridge for many years before moving to Cyprus for six years. She now lives in North Warwickshire with her husband, Alex.
She spends her time writing, editing and presenting Reading-Music-Action sessions in various settings.
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SELF PUBLISHED
Dancing the Labyrinth – Karen Martin
Australia
Karen Martin is an acclaimed Australian indie author. She is known for running away with the circus, creating plays in prisons, and striving for transformational theatre experiences. Awarded for her theatre work and preferring to travel to write in-situ, Karen learned to listen to the muses whispering in her ear. She has contributed to several non-fiction books: The Women’s Circus: Leaping the Wire, and Women in Theatre: Ewa Czajor Memorial Award Recipients, and received a Local History Award for the writing and publication of two booklets on her award-winning production of The Women’s Jail Project. Her debut non-fiction The Little Book of Red Flags, shares a humorous approach to a relationship breakdown.
Karen wrote her debut novel Dancing the Labyrinth while living in Crete. Her second novel The Bringer of Happiness was inspired from Languedoc/Southern France folklore about Mary Magdalene. Her third novel Delphi, the sequel to Dancing the Labyrinth, was recently released. The books are united in her thematic series Women Unveiled and share a distinctive feminine narrative probing societal boundaries. Women Unveiled blends Greek mythology, history and imagination in telling (almost true) stories.
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Be It So – Oma Stanescu
UK
Oma Stănescu completed her primary, secondary and high school studies in Buzău and Constanța.
She graduated the Faculty of Economics in Iasi in 1985, along with a neo-Greek course, between 1982 and 1985. She completed her education and training in a surprising diversity.
Being in India for three and half years, she graduated courses in Hatha Yoga in India at Serampore- Calcutta, Ananda Ashram- Pondicherry, Lonavla Yoga Institute- Poona, Jain Yoga Institute Adhyatma Sadhana Kendra- New Delhi. She was a student of Ayurveda for six months in 1988, at Ariya Vaiyda Chikitsa Salayam, Coimbatore, India and at Ariya Vaiyda Salayam, Kottakkal- Kerala. She also visited Dera Baba Jaimal Singh and the Golden Temple in Amritsar. She returned to Romania after the Romanian Changing of the Regime. Web page: https://authoromastanescu.com/more-books
Tayla was all of these things as a child (due to her overactive imagination). She grew up on a game ranch in South Africa, between animals such as leopards, buffalo, zebras and giraffes.
She expanded her horizons by travelling America and Europe. Experiences, people she meets, places she visits and animals she loves inspire her to write novels. Now Tayla spends her time reading, writing and going on crazy adventures.
The only thing she can’t do is reach the top shelf.
Connect on Instagram/tiktok: @tayla.jean.grossberg
Paul Knowles is a New Zealand novelist delving into the mysteries of Dunedin a South Island city in the 1950’s. Born in Napier he has lived in both the North and South Islands where he spent over three decades in the horse racing industry working in the judicial field. A former journalist he covered numerous headlining stories across a broad range of events. When he retired to live in the small coastal town of Warrington, he spends his spare time writing and The Trials of Kahu Miller reflects some of the cases both he and his former racing detective colleagues worked on throughout their careers.
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Half the child – William J. McGee
USA
William J. McGee was born in New York City and received an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Among other pursuits, he teaches undergraduate and graduate Creative Writing; represents air travelers as a consumer advocate for a Washington, DC-based nonprofit; and is an award-winning investigative journalist and columnist. McGee is the former Editor-in-Chief of Consumer Reports Travel Letter and also worked in airline flight operations management and served in the US Air Force Auxiliary. He is the author of Attention All Passengers, a nonfiction exposé of the airline industry published by HarperCollins, and is developing AirFear, a scripted television drama. His novel HALF THE CHILD was a semi-finalist in both the James Jones First Novel Competition and the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition. McGee lives on Long Island, New York.
Eyelands Book Awards 