For 7th consecutive year, we are very glad to announce the finalists and โ more than any other yearโ feel sorry that many well-written books could not be included in the shortlist. The number of finalists is defined according to the submissions in the specific category so, this is the reason why there are 7 finalists in the novels categories. There were so many submissions to the novels category that we think we are oblige to launch three new categories for next season! At the moment we are happy to see that the idea for the Self Published Books category rewarded with a lot of submissions.Here you can see finalists of all categories and the place of their residence*. We are happy to mention that among the finalists of the year there are two grand prize winners of past contests.- that is a great honor for the Awards. Congratulations to all, many thanks for sharing all the fine books and for your support for yet another year. Good luck to all!
NOVELS UNPUBLISHED
The Defection and Subsequent Resurrection of Nikolai Pushkin โ Ken Pisani
USA
Cassandra Moon and the Murders in the Olive Groves – Maddie Grigg
UK
Beauty โ Rena Rauch
Canada
The Whore Saint – Mohsen Estesnaei
Canada
A Generation of Leaves – Alexander Matheou
Malaysia
HASHTAG: Stole your husband – Jo McClelland Phillips
Australia
Freeze frame – Dawn-Michelle Baude
France
Strigorovโs Forest – Tomislav Takac
Serbia
NOVELS PUBLISHED
Anatomy of a Half Truth – Purbasha Ghosh
India
Istanbul Crossing – Timothy Jay Smith
France
The Conquest of Kailash – Inderjeet Mani
Thailand
Seasons of Four Faces – Benjamin Kwakye
USA
The village of Luka JP Roarke
USA
The Zygan Emprise – Y S Pascal
USA
Now Beacon, Now Sea – Steven Hendricks
USA
POETRY UNPUBLISHED
Seang (Hungering) – Anne Casey
Australia.
Waiting for Godot in the blue Corolla – Jennifer M Phillips
USA
Tidings from the Pelagos: a Polyphony -Jena Woodhouse
Australia
But God…Hope that Never Fails – Vernae Coffee
USA
If the birds should hear this – Dike Okoro
USA
POETRY PUBLISHED
Even the Dog Was Quiet – Margaret R. Sรกraco
USA
Hypocrisy has a Face and Other Writings – Dina Kafiris
UK
Banana Girl -Paris Rosemont
Australia
I have decided to remain vertical โ Gaylenne Carbis
Australia
Death Row Row Row Your Boat – Kurt Luchs
USA
SHORT STORY UNPUBLISHED
Black Crescent – Townsend Walker
USA
The House of Genyo and Other Stories – Terry Watada
Canada
Oscillations of Humanity – Aalok Rathod
USA
A weaverโs way – Charles Osborne
UK
Pagodas of the SunโJapan Stories – G. S. Arnold
Canada
SHORT STORY PUBLISHED
Little Fortified Stories – Barbara Black
Canada
Dolores and Other Sorrows – Denis Smyth Dรญaz
Belgium
Dead Dreams – Sandeep Kumar Mishra
India
Truth or Dare – Nadia Kabir Barb
UK
Occupations -Anna Mantzaris
USA
HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR UNPUBLISHED
A Greek Love Affair – Mary Irvine
Scotland, UK
The Three and a Half Loves of Miss Lorelei Culpepper – Jean Tschohl Quinn
USA
A Funny Thing (about Old Man Drought)โ – Steve Hawe
Australia
Darkness in 1984 – Paul W. B. Marsden
Wales
Museum of Forbidden Art – Jennifer Steil
France
Boundaries Borders Crossings-One Lesbian Life 2.0 – Jill P. Strachan
USA
Mercyโs View: Blackout – J.J. Maze
USA
HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR PUBLISHED
Today In Paradise – Andrew Corin
New Zealand
FINAL APPROACH: My father and other turbulence – Mark Blackburn
UK
Swim – Lisa Brace
UK
Straight Enough – Lorinda Boyer
USA
A Parthenon on our Roof – Peter Barber
UK
CHILDRENโS BOOK UNPUBLISHED
Elemental – James Woods
UK
Braveheart – Irina Polatchuck
Ukraine
Starfish and Tide -Dinah Gay-Dorvil
USA
CHILDRENโS BOOK PUBLISHED
Bunky and the Summer Wish – Aleksandra Tryniecka
Poland
The Hampstead Terror -Kate Wiseman
UK
Queen of the Mountain – TAK Erzinger
Switzerland
High Hopes Big Dreams – Yolanda S Pascal
USA
Micahs Wish – Pamela S K Glasner and Judy Brulo
USA and UK
SELF PUBLISHED
Dancing the Labyrinth – Karen Martin
Australia
Be It So – Oma Stanescu
UK
Oscillations of Humanity – Aalok Rathod
USA
Bittersweet – Tayla Jean Grossberg
USA
Mercy – Anton Major
Canada
The trials of Kahu Muller – Paul Knowles
New Zealand
Half the child – William J. McGee
USA
//
SPECIAL DISTINCTION** ( CHILDRENโS BOOK UNPUBLISHED)
The weight of giving – Vhutshilo Prudence Matlega
South Africa
SPECIAL DISTINCTION (NOVELS UNPUBLISHED)
The Lost Vimana – Jimmy Tandel
India
//
*The name of the country is the writersโ place of residence
** Special Distinction is an award for writers under 20 years old
Eyelands.gr & Strange Days Books are proud to announce the launch of
This is the announcement for the 7th Eyelands Book Awards / Deadline: 20 October 2024
The one and only international book award based in Greece!
We launch our contest for the seventh consecutive year and we are always seeking talented writers from all over the world!
Grand prize (published books): Five-day stay in Athens
Grand prize (writersโ choice): Five-day stay in Athens
Grand prize (unpublished books): Translation into Greek and publication from Strange Days Books
Eleven more prizes, one for each category of every section, also win a handmade ceramic designed especially for Eyelands Book Awards and a book from Strange Days books!
Certification document for every prize winner and finalist.
NEW! Writersโ choice! This new grand prize offers another chance for a holiday in Athens!!
NEW! Translation and publication for poetry & short stories prize winners!!
NEW! Video promotion across our social media for grand prize & prize winners
NEW! Brief interview for all prize winners!
NEW! Self-published books category โ with early bird submission till the final deadline of the contest!
NEW! Early bird submissions for writers on low income
NEW! Review for grand prize winner book โ published category
Final results are to be announced on December 30, 2024.
Eligible submissions include: poetry, novellas, short story collections, novels, children’s and YA books, historical fiction/memoir, graphic novels.
Multiple submissions allowed.
Early bird submission fee for every additional submission
Open to writers of any nationality
Simultaneous submissions allowed, but please notify us if full manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Finalists for every category to be announced on November 20, 2024
Final results are to be announced on Wednesday, December 30, 2024.
Participants must be 18 years old otherwise we need parents’ consent to accept the submission.
Manuscripts must be written in English.
There is no restriction regarding the form or style of writing. We prefer the pages to be numbered. Files should be uploaded as an MS Word document or PDF. Fill the entry form, copy and paste it in the body of your email.
Grand Prize (Published books):A five-day holiday in Athens in May 2025 to attend the prize ceremony
PLUS a special handmade ceramic designed especially for Eyelands Book Awards and publication (excerpts) online on our website. Eyelands cover all accommodation costs for the award winner. Air tickets not included.
Grand prize (Unpublished books): Translation into Greek and publication from Strange Days Books plus a special handmade ceramic
NEW! Writersโ choice! This new grand prize offers another chance for a holiday in Athens!!
Prize winners will read and vote for the best book among the prizes in January 2025. The winner will receive another grand prize and a five-day stay in Athens in May 2025 to attend the ceremony.
All prize winners
A special handmade ceramic designed especially for Eyelands Book Awards
PLUS Certification document for every prize plus a book (English edition) from Strange Days books
NEW: Translation and publication for poetry & short stories prize winners!! A poem/short story of each prize winner will be published in a collection from Strange Days Books. Every prize winner will receive a complimentary copy!!
FINALISTS
There will be five finalists for each category.
Online Certification document for every finalist upon request.
Grand Prize winners will be among the judges for EBA 2025
ENTRY FORM
(one entry form per book):
Title:
Author:
Category:
Publisher: (for published books only)
ISBN: (for published books only)
Address:
E-Mail:
AWARD CATEGORIES (select one per entry application):
The following are eligible:
1/Full-length books of fiction (novels or novellas of any genre)
2/Collections of short stories by one author
3/Collected and selected poems
4/Historical fiction – Memoir
5/Childrenโs and YA books – Graphic Novels
6/ Self-published books
The limit is 250.000 words for every category of published books. The limit for unpublished texts is 150.000 words except for poetry books, where there is a specific page limit.
Any text/poetry collection (up to 250 pages) written by a single author is eligible.
Any text/book written by two or more writers is also eligible. In this case, accommodation in Athens will be shared
Click the ยซbuy nowยป button. Fill the description with: EBA
Submission fee: 40 euros ($ 45)
Early bird submission 30 euros ($ 35)till September 1st, 2024.
*After the payment is complete, you may send the email with your manuscript as an attachment and the entry form completed, copied and pasted in the body of your email
*An email confirmation that your entry has been received will be sent within three/four days
*Every writer may submit more books with the early bird payment early bird payment fee of $35 (30 euros) for each additional submission
*No fee for grand prize winners of previous EBA contests
*No fee for prize winners of previous EBA โ but just once. Then they can submit with early bird submission.
*Early bird submission for finalists of previous Eyelands Book Awards
*Free submissions for writers from Ukraine
*All published books must have been published between September 20, 2016 – October 20, 2024.
*Finalists must acknowledge receipt of their nomination email to proceed to the final prizes stage.
How does it feel to be the grand prize winner of an international books contest, especially when this contest is based in a country far far away from your place of living?
I was over the moon! I was aware of how popular and prestigious the Eyelands Award was, and I was humbled to see my name on the shortlist. Then, the announcement came. I was the grand prize winner, and I burst into tears. It was on the same day I lost my daughter years ago. It was a bitter-sweet moment. I dedicated it to my beautiful Milena. The fact that the award came from Greece meant so much to me. Greece has a special place in my heart. My great-grandmother was Greek. I never knew her, but in the family, they had unfading memories of Aia Elefteria, and legends were told about her unbeatable moussaka. For me, now living in Australia, geographically, Greece might be on the other side of the world, but itโs close to my heart.
How did you hear about the contest?
I am a Queensland Writers Centre member, and I learned about the contest from their online magazine. There were many contests, but the Eyelands Awards stood out.
When did you start writing?
Itโs hard to say. My first poetry attempt was when I was around six and announced to my stunned parents that I had a poem written celebrating spring. It started like this: the Linden trees smell of Linden trees againโฆ The roar of laughter my novice poetry skills were met with deterred me from pursuing literature recognition for a while. Years passed, and the urge to tell the world about the Linden trees remained. So, it was poetry, then short stories, first published in my native country, Bulgaria. I love short stories. I was lapping up masters like Hemingway. I wrote fragments. It was in my later years that I ventured into longer formats.
You wrote a brilliant book. What was the inspiration for โThe Coffee Loversโโ?
The Coffee Lovers is not only a text for me. Thank you, that you call it, what? Brilliant! Every word in it is flesh from my flesh. Like Beethoven and Einstein once were, many people are passionate about coffee. Honestly, I think my passion for coffee crosses the line of any rationality. There were periods in my life when I had to have my coffee cup full next to me, even if I was not sipping on it, breathing in the aroma. Travelling around the world, I was getting familiar with local cultures through the unique ways different nations prepare their hot black drink.
Here in Greece it is very common a kind of coffee that I think is very similar with the one you are describing in your book. Are you a coffee lover yourself?
Oh, the Greek coffee! Is there a better coffee? Thatโs what I prepare at home. Thatโs what I drink. The magic of the briki, the right proportion of water, Greek coffee, which I buy in Australia, a pinch of sugar โ ligo, logo gliko, the way I drank it many times on the Monastiraki square and the Plaka.
How do you feel that your book will be translated into Greek?
I am thrilled and canโt wait to see my book, The Coffee Lovers, translated into Greek! Greece is a coffee loversโ country. Nothing compares to Greek coffee. Thick, smooth, lots of crema. Delicious! I hope the readers will enjoy the aroma of my book. The text won the prestigious HarperCollins/Varuna Fellowship for Manuscript Development in Australia, and some of the best editors worked on it.
Can you tell us more about another book of yours, the โโParcelsโโ?
My short story, Parcels, has a special place in my heart. It tells the compelling story of the women in my family who gathered on rare occasions when they were allowed to prepare parcels for the men locked up in prisons and forced labour camps during the communist regime. I was a little girl watching them count the permitted number of olives, tiny packets of lard and sugar, soap bars and rough woollen gloves for working in sub-zero temperatures. The women in my family never cried. Silently, they went about their duty, and in this wall of silence, there was more determination than in any word or tear.
Have you ever been in Greece?
I have been to Greece a few times, and once, I lived in this amazing country for several months. I feel at home in Greece. All the people I met treated me like one of their own. My Greek is quite basic, but every day at 10 am, a radio station here in Brisbane transmits Greek news and music. And yes, I love Greek music!! Pame na acusame: Vasilis Karras, Dalaras, VertisโฆI donโt know! Is there anything I donโt love about Greece? The Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Tower of the Winds I love so much. I think all looted marble treasures should be returned to where they belong! Then the islands, Delphi, Great Meteora monasteriesโฆ Most of all, I loved to hang out with my friends Yordani, Vaso, Yorgos, Anatoli, Sophia. They were teaching me about the incredible way Greek people conjure their lives, about the language of the krasi and love. Never had I more nourishing meals made of simple thing like melting in the mouth white beans, a piece of fresh crusty bread soaked in the best olive oil from Crete, sprinkled with aromatic dried oregano. To ladi to pharmakon ine!
Have you ever read modern Greek literature?
My knowledge of Greek literature spans my university years when I wrote essays on Ulysses in Homerโs Odyssey and couldnโt hide my disappointment that he returned home. From the modern literature, of course, Zorba, the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis. I am a big fan of Cavafyโs poem Waiting for the Barbarians. What a giant!
One of the very first books we have translated and published for Strange Days Books was โโEndless Julyโโ by Zdravka Eftimova. Are you familiar with her writings?
I have known Zdravka Eftimova for many years. She is definitely (one of) the best Bulgarian writers of the 21st Century! Her works have been translated into many countries. Besides being incredibly talented, Zdravka is a highly organised and hard-working writer. She has a big heart and is devoted to the international writersโ cause. She is a great mate! I canโt be happier to land the same award as her.
What are your plans as a writer for the future?
Write, write, writeโฆ
How do you feel with the idea you will be the judge for Eyelands Books Awards 2024?
Being a judge for Eyelands Books Awards 2024 will be a privilege. Thank you for having me.
Jennifer Burkinkshaw read English and Classics at Cambridge university before becoming an English and Drama teacher for twenty years in the UK and in Paris.ย She started the endless journey of fiction writing via an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.ย Now living in Yorkshire, Jennifer is the author of two published young adult novels, Igloo, and the recently-released Happiness Seeker. As well as travel, she enjoys reading, of course, theatre and her growing family.With her ”Igloo” (childrens book category/published) she was the grand prize winner of Eyelands Book Awards 2023
How does it feel to be the grand prize winner of an international book contest?
Winning the grand prize is an absolute delight, thank you, the pinnacle of my writing life so far. I was absolutely astonished to hear the news and still have to pinch myself to believe itโs true!
How did you hear about the contest?
I heard about the contest from a writing friend who won her category in last yearโs awards. And now Iโm so glad I did, of course!
When did you start writing?
I started the endless journey of learning to write in 2010 when I began an MA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults. Igloo was my debut novel in November 2022, but my scecond novel which just came out in November 2023, Happiness Seeker, is the story I worked on first.
I can see from your bio that you were a Drama teacher for several years. It is a brief bio so I wondered, have you ever written theatrical plays?
I have written and directed two plays for my community and have adapted novels for stage at one of the secondary schools I worked in. Iโm now hoping to write the screen play of Happiness Seeker. Happiness Seeker draws a lot on my experience as a drama teacher.
You wrote a brilliant book. What was the inspiration for โโIglooโโ?
The setting was the first inspiration for Igloo: my family and I used to own a little chalet in the French Alps when we lived in France, and my sons used to build igloos. I thought, what if two strangers met in an igloo and thereโs no way of avoiding talking to each other?
The igloo also becomes symbolically important, of course โ itโs the refuge or shelter where you can be free to be yourself. This theme of identity, of having the courage to be yourself, not who others want you to be, is central to the story and very important to me. I suppose this is because itโs how Iโve felt about myself: like Nirvana, Iโve also felt a misfit at times, whilst realizing I can only be me, with both my limitations and my strengths. And, though much later in life, Iโve followed my writing dream, just as Nirvana follows her own ambitions; being a writer feels more like myself than anything Iโve ever done or been before but itโs taken until my 50s to get there!
I really enjoyed being able to bring in all the features I love about the mountains and winter, as well as a little philosophy, including Montaigne and Ruskin. Drawing on my time as an English teacher, I also used East of Eden as a sort of โecho textโ as I call it, a story which reflects something of Jean-Louisโs story. Talking of Jean-Louis, he is, of course, is the boy Iโd love to have met if I was sixteen!
You won our grand prize participating in the category of Childrenโs books but after reading it I thought that it is more than this, meaning that could be a book for readers from all ages โ do you agree with this?
I feel extremely honoured that you think it could be a book for readers of all ages, as it is my central belief as an author of YA fiction: that young adult is just a starting age, and that YA fiction is for all readers.ย Being a teenager, growing up, coming of age is the most intense period of our lives, when we go through so many first experiences and feel all of them so deeply. All of us are teenagers at some point and they are formative years we all look back on.
Certainly my reviews are from readers of all ages โ teenagers who see themselves reflected in Nirvana but also adults who can either remember conflicts they had with their parents as teenagers, or who are now parents of teenagers and aware of how parents and teenagers so often want different things; and that parents are not always right!
When I take Igloo into schools for writing workshops and author events, I find teenagers do relate to Nirvanaโs determination to be herself and the ally she finds in her igloo โhappy placeโ; but then adults equally need a refuge and shelter to be themselves.
if your book was to be adapted for a movie script would it be a romance movie?
Igloo would be a coming-of-age first and a romance second, I think. Iโd love it to be a movie of course!
How do you feel with the idea that you will travel to Greece for the ceremony?
Iโm very excited about going to Athens later in the year and really privileged to come and talk about my writing there. I used to study Ancient Greece and have spent some time doing tours of the main classical sites, as well as enjoying holidays on several of the islands.
How do you feel with the idea you will be the judge for Eyelands Books Awards 2024?
Being a judge for the Eyelands Book Awards next year feels like one more privilege โ these awards have given me such wonderful opportunities, thank you.
What are your writing plans for the future?
Iโm hoping to write a screen play of my second YA novel, Happiness Seeker. I also have a further novel in draft form, Going West, which I hope to get back to in good time.
Four questions to each of our prize winners. For a short interview. Here are the answers!
ย 1. How do you feel to be a prize winner of an international book contest?
2. Is this your first prize or distinction in your writing career?
3. What was the inspiration of your book?
4. What are your writing plans for the future?
Thomas Gordon Reynolds /NOVEL UNPUBLISHED /Do You Want This Life?ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย
1.Iโve been writing and trying to get published for a long time now so winning a prize โ especially an international prize โ counts as good news and as encouragement. Although not much changes in the big picture in that there is still a ways to go to my goal of publication, winning a prize like the Eyelands Book Awards comes with the message that I am not a complete idiot for trying to write and that maybe I should have more faith in myself. It boosts morale and gives me something to cite in future query letters. All said Iโm pleased and motivated by the award.
2. No. Back in 2011 (thirteen years ago!) I won the Ken Klonsky prize for an unpublished novella, Break Me (Quattro Press, Toronto, 2011) under the name Tom Reynolds. Nothing since.
3.Believe it or not it was Samuel Beckettโs play Waiting For Godot that I saw at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. My book contains excerpts from a play interspersed throughout and it was written first. The absurd, comic, play needed a more serious narrative around it so the prose story came after.
4.Ah, the future! I think the future looks a lot like the past and present. Pursuing ideas, writing, trying to find outlets for reaching people (I just started writing on Medium), being rejected then trying somewhere else, entering contests (I was a finalist in the Eyelands Book Awards last year with a different manuscript โ Life And Whatโs Wrong With It โ under a shorter version of my name. So Iโll probably enter again next year). They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But thatโs probably what Iโll do.
Thomas Gordon Reynolds lives on disability in small town Canada with his wife Catherine and their rescue dog Raisin. He has lived a long time, written a lot, and published a little. He refuses to let his failures stand in the way of the success he knows is just the right word choice away. He wishes everyone associated with the prize, entrants and administers, well. The writing world needs more happiness.
L. Annette Binder / NOVEL PUBLISHED /The Vanishing Skyย
1.Iโm incredibly thankful to be a recipient of the Eyelands International Book Award for my novel The Vanishing Sky. I couldnโt believe it when I found out the news, and Iโm honored to be part of such an outstanding group of finalists. The award has a special meaning for me because I spent two summers studying in Greece after college, and I have happy memories of the hospitality and kindness of the people I met on my travels.
2. Iโve received prizes for individual short stories, which have been included in the Pushcart and O. Henry Prize anthologies, and for my short story collection, which received the Mary McCarthy Award, but this is the first prize Iโve received for a novel.
3. My novel tells the story of a mother in a small village in Germany who is trying to hold her family together during the closing months of World War Two. Her older son has come home from the eastern front suffering from a mental breakdown and her younger son has escaped from his post in the Hitler Youth and is trying to come back home to her. The story was inspired in large part by my fatherโs family history. My father was required to join the Hitler Youth as a boy, and family lore has it that he walked away from his post near the end of the war and tried to find his way back home. Writing the book helped me explore the complexity of my own family history, but in the end the characters in the book are very different from the people in my family.
4.ย I just finished a memoir, which chronicles my motherโs battle with Alzheimerโs disease, looking to science, history, art and literature to try to find meaning and beauty even as her cognition fails. Iโve also been writing short stories and hope to have a collection completed sometime soon.
L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and immigrated to the US as a child. Her short stories appeared in the Pushcart and O. Henry Prize anthologies and have been performed on WordTheatre and Public Radioโs Selected Shorts. Her story collection Rise (Sarabande) received the Mary McCarthy Prize, and her debut novel The Vanishing Sky (Bloomsbury) was a New York Times Book Review Selection for Summer. Annette studied Classics at Harvard and has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.A. and M.F.A. from the University of California.
Iryna Polishchuk /CHILDRENโS BOOKS UNPUBLISHED /Letter of hopeย
1. My name is Iryna Polishchuk. I am an author from Ukraine. I am so happy to be a prizewinner of an international book contest. It is amazing and unbelievable in the same time! I am deeply grateful to Eyelands Book Awards and especially the judges for support in this hard for Ukrainians time.
2. It is my third prize in my writing career and I really appreciate it. My category is childrenโs book unpublished.
3. I write for kids because I worry about their future and the future of the world itself because it depends on todayโs children dreams and inspirations. Hope my books help them to find their way in life. With a help of adventure story I show them how to be brave and kind, the importance to protect nature and care for animals, to collaborate and help each other, to fight for good and freedom, and never give up, and to see the light even in the darkest time.
4. I have already started to write my new book. It is about the war. I am sure that is necessary to document the todayโs events for future generation to prevent the destructive war in the future, not only in Ukraine but also all over the world. Nothing can justify the fear in a childโs eyes. Noting can justify bombings and explosions. Nothing can justify the lost future!
Iryna Polishchuk is a childrenโs writer from Kyiv, Ukraine. She is a mother of two nice children and a caring teacher of English. She, like millions of Ukrainians, faced the terrible war with bombings and explosions nearby. However, she is still staying in Ukraine with her family. In her books, she continues teaching children to be brave, caring and kind, helping them to find their way in life. It is her public duty to remind that everyone deserves freedom and happiness. Iryna deals with topics such as war, pandemic, global warming and environmental disaster but more importantly, she shows children how to overcome difficulties with the help of friendship, kindness, creativity and collaboration. She is deeply grateful to the Eyelands Book Awards, for this unique opportunity to make good deeds together in this difficult time.
Anna Mantzaris / SHORT STORIES UNPUBLISHED /Machinations of the Heart and other Stories
1.Iโm so appreciative. And I loved reading the bios and looking at the wonderful work of the finalists and other prize winners.
2. I am so grateful to have been a finalist for Eyelands in 2020.ย
3. The short stories are named after the title story, Machinations of the Heart, which was a new version of my first published short story. I used the theme from that piece of an โalmostโ connection people often have while I was writing and curating the rest of the stories in the collection.
4. My flash fiction collection, Occupations, was just released by Galileo Press, and I have a few projects in different phrases right now, including editing a prose chapbook, working on more short stories, and maybe (!) revising a novel draft.
Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in Ambit, The Cortland Review, McSweeneyโs Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing Quarterly, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction chapbook Occupations is forthcoming from Galileo Press. She teaches writing in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.
I am so excited and honored to be the unpublished Historical Fiction winner! Wow, thank you so very much. I hoped for this, worked very hard and just couldnโt believe the words when I saw my manuscript listed. My whole family was here for brunch and I was shaking when I read the email for the first time and told them. I hope this is just the start for โ26.2โ and the story can only be shared with more from here.
2. ย ย โ26.2โ also won first place in the Chanticleer International Book Awards Chaucer Early Historical Fiction contest (1 of 5). I have also won an Honorable mention and was shortlisted for another manuscript in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. I am so deeply honored to have these stories recognized. This is my first overall win in the historical fiction category. Thank you!!
3. โ26.2โโs inspiration comes from both my love for running and my awe of Greece. I often tell people, we have โ300โ and โTroy.โ We need the full retelling of the worldโs first marathon. After visiting Greece and falling so in love with Athensโs history and beauty, I decided to write โ26.2.โ After researching and finding that so much of Athensโs history, around the time of Marathon, shaped world history, Philippidesโs story just took a life of his own through my fingers, telling itself in this reimagined journey of both Athens and Marathon.
4. I would absolutely love to publish โ26.2.โ My goal is to get the story out to the public for all runners and historical fiction enthusiasts. My dream is for โ26.2โ to motivate and move people. I would also like to pursue publishing for my other three manuscripts, as well as meddle into some early childhood chapter book writing, inspired by my daughter, who is a new reader.
Amy Cleven โ I am a marathon runner, author, and past traveler to Greece. My goal in writing โ26.2โ was to evoke personality, experience, and a vividly imaginative telling of the worldโs first marathon, while also capturing the beautiful and inspiring heart that is Greece. I have won a First Prize award at the Chanticleer Book Awards, have been published in a poetry anthology, and have worked 15 years in the Nuclear Medicine field. I live in rural Wisconsin, USA with my husband and two young daughters. As a runner and writer, Greece has always inspired and awed me. I was so happy to imagine the first ever marathon through Phidippidesโs words.
Jeff Fearnside / HISTORICAL FICTION PUBLISHED /Ships in the Desert
1.It feels wonderful! Writing is such a solitary business, and itโs not always easy to know how many people oneโs writing is reaching and how they receive it. Winning an Eyelands Book Award is a confirmation that others see value in the work, which is encouraging. Thatโs really the most important thing for me about winning awards: connecting with other people. Hopefully, it brings the work to the attention of those who might not otherwise hear about it. It works the other way as well. For example, itโs brought me into contact with the good people at Eyelands: Andriana, Gregory, Patricia, and everyone else. Iโve also discovered new books by writers who were finalists or winners of different contests, and Iโve even befriended many of them on social media, where we now follow each other. In this way, community is built.
2. No, Iโve been fortunate to have won a number of awards over the course of my career. My most recent book, Ships in the Desert, alone has won four major awards so far, including, of course, an Eyelands Book Award! I feel extremely grateful for this. As I just mentioned, it puts me in touch with other people, a much wider range of people than I otherwise would be able to connect with.
3. My personal experience, for one. Kazakhstan, which is where most of Ships in the Desert is set, is important to me, as I lived there for four years and met my wife there. Iโm fascinated by the commonalities and differences between cultures, and so the book is about that as well, with sections in which I look back to my time in Kazakhstan after my return to the U.S. Finally, my passion for the natural environmental and my dismay at the state of it worldwide today was a big motivation to write the book. Its large central section, which is framed around the story of a trip I took to the dying Aral Sea in Central Asia, is all about the importance of water, its proper management, and the consequences of failing to protect this life-giving natural resource. Seeing firsthand those ships grounded in a desert that had once been a sea, I understood that the reasons for the disaster were not just limited to the time and place where it happened; itโs something weโre seeing play out in various ways all over the world right now. I felt compelled to bear witness to this and, I hope, help us imagine ways to protect our natural environment, which is really protecting our own health and long-term future on this planet.
4. I have several projects in the works! I had been writing a lot of poetry while Ships in the Desert was in production, and so I now have three differently themed poetry manuscripts Iโm shopping around, one thatโs more formally inventive, one thatโs more environmentally focused, and one thatโs more culturally relevant. Obviously, I hope to find good homes for all three. In the meantime, while Iโm submitting those, Iโve turned my attention back to writing fiction again. Iโm about three stories away from completing another short-story collection, and Iโve also completed the first draft of a novel set in Kazakhstan. Finishing those are my two highest priorities at the moment, and Iโm feeling quite excited about both.
Jeff Fearnside is the author of two full-length books and two chapbooks of prose and poetry, most recently Ships in the Desert (SFWP, 2022), which has been recognized with several honors, including a Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award. Fearnsideโs individual stories, essays, and poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies such as The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review, The Pinch, Story, and Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest (University of Washington Press, 2016). Among several competitive writing fellowships he has received are residencies at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky, and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregonโs Cascade Mountains. Other awards for his writing include a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Projectโs Literary Awards Program, the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize from the National League of American Pen Women, and an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. Fearnside lived in Central Asia for four years and has taught writing and literature in Kazakhstan and at various institutions in the U.S., currently Oregon State University and the MFA in Writing Program at OSUโCascades. More info: https://www.jeff-fearnside.com/
Nancy Burke / POETRY UNPUBLISHED /Caesura
1. Writing is, in some ways, a social activity โ I consider my poems to be elements of a discussion with those writers who have formed me, and who function as aspects of what I might call, after Freud, my “ego ideal,” the interlocutors of my being. Yet in other respects, writing is an isolated activity. Having the sense that there is sharing across the globe, especially in what seems like a time of global strife and fragmentation, seems especially meaningful to me.
2. I have been grateful to have received other gestures of recognition for my writing, but I especially appreciate this support from Greece as I have such fond memories of a few summers I spent in Corfu, which this particular prize enlivens.
3. My book doesn’t have a single source of inspiration behind it. I am moved to write as a way of forming my reactions to experience. For me, this is what it means to be alive. It’s a matter of self-creation โ “write or die,” as they say.
ย 4.ย To keep writing!ย Specifically, I want to delve deeper into my poetry writing, find a home for a novel-length manuscript that has recently finished with me, and also write more songs, reviving a part of my life I’ve mostly been away from since the pandemic.
Nancy Burke is a poet, fiction writer, psychoanalyst and psychotherapy activist from Evanston IL. Her work has appeared in Story International, After Hours, American Poetry Journal, Confrontation, Whitefish Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and other literary publications as well as in psychoanalytic journals and online. Her writing has won numerous awards, including several conferred by the Illinois Arts Council, as well as by Rhino, Gradiva, Fish, Writers-Editors, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and other organizations and publishers. She has released two CDs of original music. Her first novel, Undergrowth (Gibson House Press), was published in 2017. She recently completed the manuscript of a second novel, The Box, for which she is currently in search of a home.
Brandi George / POETRY PUBLISHED /The Nameless
1.My book is so much about growing up in the rural United States, and I have often wondered if people who grew up in very different circumstances would still be moved by it. This tells me that, yes, itโs possible. My primary goal is to connect to others through my work, so this is a wonderful thing.
2. I have won others with my first book, although this is my first international book award.
3. My book was inspired by so muchโ the people I grew up with, Michigan flora and fauna, cornfields, yoga, poetry, tarot, cows, haha. All of the human and more-than-human beings around meโpast and presentโgave me a unique image, a vision, and a new mode of being.
4. Iโm working on a series of poem-essays about figures from my dreams and visions, including Michelangelo, Elizabeth Siddal, Virginia Woolf, Salvador Dalรญ, William Shakespeare, and a bear.
Brandi George is the author of Gog (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) the play in verse, Faun (Plays Inverse, 2019), and The Nameless (Kernpunkt Press, 2023). Her poems have recently appeared in American Poetry Review, Fence, and Orion, and she has been awarded residencies at Hambidge Center for the Arts, the Hill House, and the Time & Place Award in France. She teaches writing at FSW in Fort Myers, Florida.
Eyelands Book Awards 