Winners of 2015 Meringoff Writing Awards

/ /

Dear ALSCW members and friends:

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2015 Meringoff Writing Awards. The awards include a prize of $2,000 each and the possibility of publication in the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers journal, Literary Imagination, or its newsletter, Literary Matters. The Meringoff Writing Awards are given annually for a poem, a work of fiction, and a work of creative nonfiction.

1) Non-Fiction (Judges, Vincent Kling and Matthew DeForrest)

Winner: John Koelsch for “Chapter 19 ~ Final Day (Excerpt)”  

In Vietnam, John received a Bronze Star w. “V” Device for Valor, 2 Purple Hearts, and a C.I.B. His publications include a book of Vietnam poetry If I Could Find A Way … in 2015. He’s the 2016 President of Valley Writers a Chapter of the Virginia Writers Club.

2) Fiction (Judge, Frank Blessington)

Winner: Helen Storey for “Gris, Gris” 

Helen Storey recently completed her first novel, Gris-Gris, while earning her PhD at Bath Spa University, U.K.  Her short stories and poetry have won several awards and have been published in national journals. She is currently writing a new novel and teaching writing at Pennsylvania State University. When not writing, reading, or teaching, Helen fills her time dancing, traveling, and collecting wayward dogs

3) Poetry (Judges, Mark Halliday and George Kalogeris)

Co-winners:

Al Basile for “A Straw in the Wind” 

Al Basile is best known in the blues community worldwide as a singer/songwriter/cornetist. He has been nominated five times by the Blues Foundation for a Blues Music Award as best horn player. The first recipient of a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Brown in 1970, he spent 25 years as a private school teacher; his poetry collection, A Lit House: 100 Poems 1975-2011 was published in 2012.

Robert B. Shaw for “Ferrying”

Robert B. Shaw is the Emily Dickinson Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.  He is the author of Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use (Ohio University Press) and of six volumes of poetry.  A new collection of poems, A Late Spring, and After, is forthcoming from Pinyon Publishing in fall, 2016.