AWARDS
Congratulations to Lit Fest presenter Gail Storey, and Lighthouse instructors BK Loren and Steven Schwartz for receiving a Colorado Book Award! And to member Erika Walker, who was one of three co-authors of Denver Mountain Parks: 100 Years of the Magnificent Dream, another Colorado Book Award winner!
Steven Schwartz’s Little Raw Souls has also received the 2013 Foreword Book of the Year Award—Gold Medal Winner in Short Stories, and Gail Storey received Foreword's Bronze in Adventure & Recreation for her memoir, I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail.
Mario Acevedo received first place for Best Novel-Adventure or Drama in the 2014 International Latino Book Awards for Good Money Gone, a novel co-authored with Richard Kilborn. Winners in other categories included Isabel Allende, Rudolfo Anaya, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor!
David R. Brock won Best Original Screenplay at the GI Film Festival 2014 for his piece, "Christmas Leave." Huzzah!
Rick Gustafson's short story, "Discipline," was awarded the E.M. Koeppel 2014 Grand Prize for short fiction.
Lighthouse young writer Cassidy Cole, a Chris Russo Fellow for 2013-14, has received third place in Writing for Peace's Young Writers Competition for a piece she wrote in a class during the Big Read.
Youth instructor Andrea Doray recently received First Place for Best Serious Column Writing in the Colorado Press Association's annual Better Newspaper awards. Doray's column "Alchemy" appears in several suburban Denver newspapers. Doray is also a columnist on the Denver Post's "Colorado Voices" panel.
We've got the dirt on Robert McBrearty—his story "What Happened to Laura?" won the 2013 Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Contest and will appear in Big Muddy this summer!
Lighthouse instructor Seth Brady Tucker’s next collection of poetry, We Deserve the Gods We Ask For, won the Gival Press poetry prize and will be published in October. This is the same press publishing visiting Lit Fest instructor Thomas McNeely’s novel Ghost Horse, also in October.
Jefferson McClure's screenplay “Dead Man Blues” won first place in the Music-Inspired Feature category in the 2014 Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition. The piece was workshopped in last year’s screenplay workshop at Lit Fest led by Gordy Hoffman.
Nancy Sharp's first memoir Both Sides Now: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Bold Living (Books & Books Press) won both a 2014 National Indie Excellence Award and an International Book Award. She began her book at Lighthouse!
Congrats to Katie Boland, whose short story "The Night the Boy Fell" was a Top 25 finalist for Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award! The story was critiqued in both Andrea Dupree's and Alexander Lumans' Advanced Short Story workshops.
Trevor Crandall's script "Spider Hole" received an honorable mention from Los Angeles Film and Script Festival. He credited the success of his script to Michael Catlin's coaching in a Lighthouse Storytelling Intensive!
Ellen Nordberg's essay "Ambivalent Mother" was a winner in the memoir contest for the "Me, Myself, I" Stories on Stage show in April, and her essay "Mommy and Me²" was chosen for the "Listen To Your Mother Show" in May. Her essay "Please Don't Ask Me To Feed Your Cat" won second place in the Boulder Writers Workshop Comedy Contest earlier this year.
BOOK NEWS
Congrats to Eleanor Swanson, whose short story collection Exiles and Expatriates, winner of Prize Americana 2013, was just released.
Kudos to Lighthouse member Janice Roetenberg, who co-authored the revised edition of the bestseller, Sensational Kids-Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder.
If the word "chemistry" makes you cringe, you'll appreciate science writer and professor Kimberley Waldron—whose second book, Twenty-First Century Chemistry, teaches the subject through stories.
Nana Mizushima wrote a translation of the Japanese bestselling memoir Nagareru Hoshiwa Ikiteiru, or Tei: A Memoir of the End of War and Beginning of Peace, which was published this year. The project was inspired by historical fiction writer John Shors at last year's Lit Fest.
Congratulations to Lorraine Walker Williams, whose collection "Split Poems" was released by Kelsay Books.
Congrats to Erika Krouse, whose novel Contenders is coming out in spring 2015 from Rare Bird Books.
Huzzah to Maura Weiler! Her debut novel, Contrition, the story of a cloistered nun who is a world-class painter and the journalist who wants to make her famous, sold to Simon & Schuster for publication in May 2015.
Congrats to Lighthouse Executive Director Michael Henry, whose second full-length poetry collection, Active Gods, is out from Conundrum Press!
Long-time Lighthouser Nancy Vorkink Machin has two new books at Tattered Cover—Mosaic Lights: Poems and Essays and Tear Drop: Prisms of Grief.
Phyllis Barber's new book To The Mountain: One Mormon Woman's Search for Spirit (Quest Books) is being released in June. Congrats Phyllis!
PUBLISHED WORKS
Lighthouse's Andrea Dupree and Nick Arvin each have a story appearing in the fall issue of Ploughshares, edited by Percival Everett.
Kudos to our fearless leader, Michael J. Henry! His poem "August, Public Pool" will appear in the Scottish-based journal, Dactyl.
The anthology Man in the Moon: Essays on Fathers and Fatherhood, compiled by Stephanie G'Schwind, is available just in time for Father's Day. Among the authors featured is Lighthouse favorite Robin Black, who is returning to Lighthouse during Lit Fest 2015!
A poem by John Brehm, who taught a number of sold-out Lit Fest classes, appeared in the May issue of The Sun. He also has new poems forthcoming in Poetry Northwest and New South. Kudos!
Courtney Zenner, a former Alice Maxine Bowie Fellow, will have a selection of her memoir-in-progress published in this fall's Sabal.
Kudos to Carmel Mawle, whose short story "Jamila" appears in the current issue of Contemporary World Literature Journal—the story was previously published in Smokelong Quarterly. Carmel thanked Lighthouse instructor Bill Henderson for his insightful feedback on early drafts of this story.
Jorel Hill's poem "Frozen Shadows" and Savion Harris's poem "Questions" were published in Rattle's first Young Poets Anthology, RYPA 2014. They both wish to thank all the instructors at Lighthouse!
Kudos to Lighthouser Minda Honey, whose essay "The Reality of Dating All Men When You're Black" appeared on Gawker!
Ray Kemble's story "Tell Him What?" will appear in Veterans Writing Project's quarterly literary review, 0-Dark-Thirty.
Kudos to Ann Tinkham, whose short story "Orcinus Pas de Deux" appears in the June issue of Word Riot. The piece was workshopped in two of Jessica Roeder's Intermediate/Advanced Fiction workshops!
Congrats to Kathryn Eastburn's student, Loni Huston-Eizenga, who was published in a new anthology, Three Minus One: Parents' Stories of Love and Loss.
Rebecca Snow's poem, "Butterfly Boy," appears in the 2013 Northern Colorado Writers Contest anthology, Pooled Ink, as an Editor's Pick.
Lynne Stoecklein's short story, "Ashes, Ashes," was accepted for publication by The Carolina Quarterly. She thanks Lighthouse instructor Doug Kurtz for his insightful guidance with this story.
Kudos to friend (and Lighthouser) Diane Malk, whose story "I Unfriend You" appears in Hackwriters!
Huzzah to Corie Rosen, whose short story "Flight Path" was published in the Crab Creek Review's 2014 issue.
Congrats to Lighthouser Sam DeLeo whose story "Buying and Selling Death: The Music of Mexico's Drug Trade" appeared in Paste Magazine.
Three cheers for Ginny Hoyle, who has two poems in the latest issue of Baltimore Review.
Lighthouse instructor Jenny Shank had a hilarious piece posted on McSweeney's.
Mario Acevedo's essay "Love Between the Species" is in Now Write: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, edited by Laurie Lamson.
Jannett Matusiak's nonfiction flash essay, "Of the Too Many to Count," was published in the spring issue of Defunct, an online literary journal whose masthead includes Robin Hemley who taught during Lit Fest.
Lighthouser Petra Perkins will be published in the next edition of Crone Magazine and has been asked to become a regular columnist. And she won third prize for short humor fiction on humorpress.com. Double kudos!
Elle Nash's short story "The Thing I'm Scared of Most" was published by Exterminating Angel Press: The Magazine.
Four cheers for Meg E. Griffitts, who has four poems included in the Spring 2014 issue of BlazeVOX.
Super news! Shawna Ervin's essay “Becoming Superman's Mom” was published in the spring/summer issue of The Diverse Arts Project. She worked on the essay in both Kathryn Eastburn's Personal Essay class and Steve Almond's juried workshop last year.
Kudos to Bill Hyde, whose creative nonfiction essay "Fencing" has been accepted by GreenPrints Magazine for publication in an upcoming issue.
LIGHTHOUSERS IN THE NEWS
Rachel Weaver's debut novel Point of Direction was featured in Oprah Magazine in May and will be reviewed on NPR's All Things Considered and in the New York Times Book Review in June. Point of Direction was torn all apart (in the good ways) and put back together again in Lighthouse workshops.
OTHER NEWS
Kita Helmetag Murdock read from her recently released middle-grade novel, Future Flash, at Boulder Bookstore in June.
Lighthouser Kathryn T. S. Bass has been awarded a month-long residency at Jentel. She'll be spending October in Wyoming for the second year in a row, having been at Brush Creek Ranch at about the same time in 2013.
Huzzah to Lit Fest participant Gerry Wilson, who received the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship for 2015.
Nancy Sharp wrote a guest blog about her journey through grief, writing a memoir, and how Lighthouse helped guide the latter.
Lighthouse MFA news! Dennis Mont’Ros is going to the MFA program at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and Katie Boland will be going to the Louisiana State University MFA Program.
Kudos to Meg Griffitts, who got accepted into the MFA programs for Texas State University and Wichita State University for poetry. (She credits Seth Brady Tucker for his guidance and advice that helped immensely with her portfolio. Way to go Seth, too!)