Previous Winners
A NOTE OF CONGRATULATIONS TO A PREVIOUS WINNER (and of encouragement to all future entrants!) : In 2006, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW named as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year in Non-Fiction our 2001 winner of the Dana Award in the Novel. To explain: Danielle Trussoni's novel, originally titled Tunnel Rat, which won our 2001 Novel Award, was subsequently re-worked as a memoir of her relationship with her father, a Viet Nam vet, and published in 2006 as FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH. That memoir went on to be named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 in Nonfiction.
2006 DANA AWARDS
DANA AWARD IN PORTFOLIO: George Teter,
Amherst, MA, for three short stories: “The Game of the Fliers,”
“Lament to a Recruiting Sergeant,” and “What Fate Has Taken You from
the Burning Sun of Your Birth?”
First Honorable
Mention: MaryLee McNeal, Palo Alto, CA; Second Honorable Mention, Vincent
Reusch, Kalamazoo, MI. Other finalists: Art Blount, Elmhurst, NY; Lenore
Hart, Franktown, VA; Arlene Heyman, New York, NY; Marie Holmes, New York,
NY; Cynthia Reeves, Wayne, PA; Roger Siebert, Austin, TX; Holly Thompson,
Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan.
DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL: Harvey Grossinger, Bethesda, MD, for “The
Caretaker’s Niece”
First Honorable Mention: Robert McKean, Newton, MA; Second Honorable
Mention: Sean Murphy, Ranchos de Taos, NM.
Other finalists: Andi Diehn, Enfield, NH; Jane Drewry, Huddleston,
VA; Agustin Maes, Berkeley, CA; Jessica McVay, Denver, CO; Thad Nodine,
Santa Cruz, CA; Ann Weisgarber, Sugar Land, TX; Russell Working, Oak Park,
IL.
DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION: Paula W. Peterson, Evanston, IL, for
"Shelter"
First Honorable Mention: Suzanne Rivecca, San Francisco, CA; Second
Honorable Mention: Bruce Douglas Reeves, Berkeley, CA. Other finalists:
Jacob Appel, New York, NY (2 stories); Joseph Bathanti, Boone, NC; Siobhan
Evans, Harker Heights, TX; Daryl Murphy, Chicago, IL; Richard K. Weems,
Hawthorne, NJ; Mark Wisniewski, Lake Peekskill, NY.
DANA AWARD IN POETRY: Camille Dungy, San Francisco, CA, for
“Complicit” et al.
First Honorable Mention: Christina Hutchins, Albany, CA; Second Honorable
Mention: Kim Lohse, Redwood City, CA. Other finalists: Patricia Barone,
Fridley, MN; Christina Hutchins, Albany, CA (2 sets of poems); Harold A.
Lloyd, Greensboro, NC; Rita Mae Reese, San Francisco, CA; Patricia Smith,
Tarrytown, NY; Ben Wilensky, Rockaway Park, NY.
ABOUT OUR WINNERS
GEORGE TETER is a
former student of Monroe Engel at Harvard, and of the Stanford Creative
Writing Program. He wrote very little while getting his MD degree and his
training as a psychiatrist. He currently lives with his wife in Amherst,
Massachusetts, and spends most of his time in an active practice with
inpatients and outpatients. He resumed writing some years ago and says he
regards his first, unpublished, novel “with awe and consternation as [a]
return to a life long imagined.” He has subsequently written with
Pat Schneider of Amherst Writers and Artists, and studied under Tom Jenks,
concentrating on short stories. The Dana Award is his first literary
prize, although a previous piece of writing, his MD thesis, won the first
Theodore Lidz Prize from Yale School of Medicine. He is currently rounding
out a collection of stories of which those submitted for the Dana Award in
Portfolio are a major part.
HARVEY GROSSINGER
received his BA in English from New York University, his MA (and ABD) in
English from Indiana University, and his MFA from American University, where
he received the Myra Sklarew Prize, the MFA Program Thesis Award. His
novella and story collection--"The Quarry: Stories"--received
both the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and The Edward Lewis
Wallant Book Award. Individual
stories have been published in the New England Review, Mid-American
Review, Western Humanities Review, Cimarron Review, Ascent, The Chicago
Tribune, Antietam Review, and the anthology "Listening to the
Voices."
Critical essays on
"The Quarry" novella appear in "Holocaust Literature: An
Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work," a Two-Volume International
Holocaust Reference Text on Literary Representations of the Shoah, ed. by
S. Lillian Kremer, Routledge Press, and in "Contemporary Jewish
American Writers and the Multicultural Dilemma: The Return of the
Exiled," by Andrew Furman, Syracuse University Press.
He received an
Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts
Council, a Literary Work-In-Progress Grant from the Maryland State Arts
Council, was a finalist for the Howard Foundation Fellowship in Creative
Writing, and received a Nelson Algren Award for one of his stories.
His most recent public reading was at the Baltimore Literary Festival,
which was sponsored by the Baltimore Poetry and Literary Society. He
is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
He received the Edward
Lewis Wallant Award at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at
the University of Hartford, where he gave a talk, reading, and book
signing. The award has special meaning to him for a number of
reasons. It is named in honor of the author of "The
Pawnbroker," and the Wallant prize is judged by three prominent
scholars of both American and Jewish-American literature. Other
winners of the Wallant Award include: Cynthia Ozick, Francine Prose, Tova
Reich, Steve Stern, Melvin Jules Bukiet, Rebecca Goldstein, Gerald
Shapiro, Allegra Goodman, Dara Horn, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, Chaim Potok,
Jerome Badanes, Johanna Kaplan, Jay Neugeboren and Daphne Merkin, and he
says he is “humbled and proud to be in such illustrious company.”
He was also co-founder of the Moment magazine short story contest, which he administered and served on the panel of judges for, for five years.
He is a Professorial
Lecturer at American University, and a Lecturer and Thesis Advisor at
Johns Hopkins University. He teaches fiction workshops and also
teaches literature to both undergraduate and graduate students.
PAULA W. PETERSON's
book of short stories, Women in the Grove, was published by Beacon Press
in Spring 2004. Her book of essays, Pentitent, with Roses
(University of New England Press, 2001), was the winner of the Bakeless
Prize for Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the Best American
Non-Required Reading 2004, and in many literary journals. She
teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago's Graham School for
Continuing Education.
CAMILLE DUNGY says:
"As to my greatest writing/career accomplishment: I feel the
greatest sense of accomplishment in the fact that I keep doing this thing
I dedicated myself to my sophomore year in college--when I walked out of
my o-chem section and filled my schedule up with the poetry courses I was
loving so much better than the pre-med courses I had thus far been taking.
I made the decision then that I was interested in figuring out how poems
work to the same degree my chemistry professor seemed to be interested in
whatever it was he was talking about that day. Still, most mornings
I wake up and must face the question again: Is this really what I want to
do with my life? So far the answer has been yes. And in the
intervening years some really amazing rewards have come my way. My
MFA, a fellowship to Cave Canem, a fellowship from the NEA, this Dana
Award and other grants and awards, my first book (WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO
LEAVE FOR POISON, Red Hen Press, 2006), and an associate professorship at
SFSU are but a few. For all of these I am immensely thankful.
The fact that sometimes my work is acknowledged, as it has been now with
this award, pleases me no end and helps encourage future efforts. For just
such moments, I have worked hard. These acknowledgments help me
recommit to that promise I made all those years ago: that I would stick to
doing what I loved even if it was hard sometimes hard, or lonely, or
frustrating, or seemingly futile; that poetry would have a central place
in my studies and my life. The fact that I have been able to
maintain that commitment is an accomplishment that makes me glad and
proud."
2005 DANA AWARDS
DANA AWARD IN PORTFOLIO: Josh Weil, Brooklyn, NY, for the novel
"River Horse" and short stories "Salt Lake" and
"The Tree Thieves"
First Honorable Mention: Lisa Borders, Somerville, MA; Second Honorable
Mention: Sarah Stone, Berkeley, CA. Other finalists: Philip Carter,
Sanibel, FL; Pierre Hauser, New York, NY; John Lauricella, Ithaca, NY;
Liese Schwarz, Providence, RI; Lones Seiber, Knoxville, TN; Erin Soros,
Vancouver, British Columbia; John Tait, Denton, TX; Steven Wingate,
Lafayette, CO.
DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL: Paul Graham, Canton, NY, for "A
Trained Voice"
First Honorable Mention: Cindy Henry, Wylie, TX; Second Honorable Mention:
Rita Ciresi, Wesley Chapel, FL. Other finalists: John Addiego,
Corvallis, OR; Catherine Jones, Boise, ID; Agustin Maes, Berkeley,
CA; Sharon Solwitz, Chicago, IL; John Tait, Denton, TX; Steven
Wingate, Lafayette, CO.
DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION: Catherine Gentile, Yarmouth, ME, for "Buonma
Song Youg O'Reilly"
First Honorable Mention: Horatio Potter, Wilsall, MT; Second Honorable
Mention: CB Anderson, Lexington, MA. Other finalists: Ioanna Carlsen,
Tesuque, NM; Pierre Hauser, New York, NY; Christiana Langenberg, Huxley,
IA; S. Frederic Liss, Lexington, MA; Michael Mehaffey, Houston, TX; Ray
Morrison, Winston-Salem, NC;
Andy Mozina, Kalamazoo, MI.
DANA AWARD IN POETRY: Sam Witt, Somerville, MA, for "Confession"
et al.
First Honorable Mention: Jennifer Perrine, Tallahassee, FL; Second
Honorable Mention: Mark Nickels, Brooklyn, NY. Other finalists:
Diane De Pisa, Albany, CA;
Jack Lynch, New York, NY; Catherine Morrisey, Belmont, MA; Don
Schofield, Thessaloniki, Greece; Allison Smythe, Houston, TX; Gabriel
Spera, Los Angeles, CA; Wyatt Townley, Shawnee Mission, KS.
ABOUT OUR WINNERS, 2005
JOSH WEIL is a graduate of the MFA creative writing program at Columbia
University. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he works as a
photographer's assistant and teaches college writing. His fiction
has been published in Harpur Palate and Carve Magazine
and is forthcoming in New England Review, West Branch, and New
Letters. He's been a finalist in the Pirate's Alley William
Faulkner Novella Competition; the Raymond Carver Short Story
Competition; the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award For New Writers; and
the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest. His non-fiction
is forthcoming in The New York Times and has appeared in Orion
Magazine, among others. His screenplay "Bellows" was a
runner-up for the Sundance Writer's Lab. "Wild Geese,"a
film he wrote and directed, won Best Short at the Chicago Alternative Film
Festival. He recently finished a novel, River Horse, and has
been awarded a 2006-2007 Fulbright Grant to Egypt where he plans to
research and write his next book.
PAUL GRAHAM writes both fiction and personal essays. His short fiction has
appeared in a number of literary journals, including American Literary
Review, Louisville Review, and Orchid Literary Review. For the
last four years he has lived with his wife on New York's border with
Canada, teaching creative writing and literature at St. Lawrence
University. In the fall of 2006 he will move to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, to
teach creative writing at St. Vincent College.
CATHERINE GENTILE earned a Masters Degree from St. Joseph College
in West Hartford, Connecticut. After a career in special education/mental
health, her writing became her focus. Her short fiction has been published
in The Hurricane Review, The Ledge, The Long Story, and Kaleidoscope.
July Literary Press included one of her stories in its 2004 anthology, Hello
and Goodbye. She has been the recipient of a fellowship to study
writing at the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia and a
finalist in The Reynolds Price Fiction Contest. Her story "Until You
Get There" gained an honorable mention from Jane's Stories Press
Foundation. She has completed a collection of short stories, is working on
a book about providing effective literary criticism, and is a staff writer
for Portland Trails, a land conservation newsletter. A native of
Hartford, Connecticut, she lives with her husband on a small island in
Maine where she is completing her first novel, Sunday's Orphan.
SAM WITT was born in Wimbledon, England, and lived outside of London until
the age of seven, when his family moved to Winston-Salem, NC. After taking
his first poetry workshop at Wake Forest University, while still in high
school, he began to write poetry seriously, and went on to graduate with a
B.A. in English from the University of Virginia, and an M.F.A. in Poetry
Writing from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Until very recently, Witt has
lived in San Francisco, California where he wrote journalism for such
publications as the San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Salon, Computer World,
CNN.com, and others. His poems have been published in Virginia Quarterly, Georgia Review,
Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Fence, New England Review and the
anthologies The New Young American Poets and The Iowa Anthology of New
American Poetries. In the Fall of 1999, and again in the Spring of 2000,
at the invitation of the Lithuanian government, he participated in poetry
festivals in Druskininkai and Vilnius. His first book, Everlasting Quail,
was chosen by Carol Frost as the winner of the Katherine Bakeless Nason
Award in Poetry from the Breadloaf Writers Conference. It was published in
August 2001 by the University Press of New England. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Russia for the year 2002 and
lived for thirteen months in St. Petersburg, Russia where he wrote,
studied Russian poetry, and taught American Poetry at St. Petersburg State
University. He has also taught at the Nevsky Institute of Language and
Culture, the University of Iowa and at Harvard University. he has also
been a resident at the Yaddo Colony.
2004 DANA AWARDS
2004 PORTFOLIO AWARD: JOAN CORWIN, Evanston, IL,
for short stories "Details," "Elm," "Perspective"
2004 NOVEL AWARD: STEPHEN LOVELY, Iowa City,
IA, for "Irreplaceable You"
2004 SHORT FICTION AWARD: GLORI SIMMONS, San
Francisco, CA, for "Sleeping Baby"
2004 POETRY AWARD: EVAN OAKLEY, Windsor, CO,
for "For the Obstinate" et al.
ABOUT OUR WINNERS, 2004
JOAN CORWIN has a Ph.D. in English from Indiana
University and has published a number of essays in her area of special
interest, nineteenth-century travel writing. Her fiction has
appeared in the River Oak Review and StoryQuarterly. Her short story
"Hindsight" was a winner in Chicago Public Radio's 2003 Stories
on Stage Competition. Another short story, "Sinners," was
chosen for the anthology Falling Backwards: Stories About Fathers
and Daughters (Hourglass Press, 2004). Safe Shall Be My Going, a
novella set during World War I, was a semi-finalist in the 2004 William
Faulkner/William Wisdom Competition and a winner in the 2004 RockWay Press
Competition.
STEPHEN LOVELY graduated from Kenyon College and attended the Writers'
Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he taught undergraduate
literature courses and a fiction writing course for seniors. Over the past
ten years, while writing "Irreplaceable You", he has worked as a
unit clerk in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the University of Iowa
Hospitals & Clinics and as a financial clerk in the University of
Iowa's Center for Media Production.
GLORI SIMMONS earned a MFA in poetry from the
University of Michigan where she was a Colby Fellow. Her poetry
collection Graft was published by Truman State University Press in 2001,
and was the recipient of several prizes including the Poetry Society of
America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Prize. Since then, she has focused
on short stories and a novel manuscript, Lilac City, as well as
collaborations with musicians, visual artists, and filmmakers. In
2003, she received a Stegner Fellowship in fiction at Stanford. She
has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony, Montalvo, Blue Mountain
Center, and Ragdale.
EVAN OAKLEY received an MFA in Poetry from George Mason University in 1992; while there, he also worked as a tutor for Gallaudet University, the only liberal arts college for the deaf in the world. During this time, he was also a research assistant for poet Carolyn Forche on the volume Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness. Before seeking an MFA, and upon graduation, Oakley was employed as a laborer by building contractors--experiences which allowed him to meditate on the nature of a degree in poetry: curious, worthy, and incommunicable. Oakley has published in various journals, including Ploughshares, MatterJournal, Phoebe, and the Front Range Review.
2003
DANA AWARDS
PORTFOLIO AWARD: STACY CARLSON, Irvington, NY, for 3 novels AMONG THE WONDERFUL, CRESCENT,
and DIGGING IT UP
NOVEL AWARD:
TATJANA SOLI, Tustin, CA, for THE LOTUS EATERS
SHORT FICTION AWARD:
ALMA GARCIA, Seattle, WA, for THE GREAT BEYOND
POETRY AWARD: SIMEON BERRY, Quincy, MA, for BESIDES SAPPHO et al.
2002 DANA AWARDS
DANA
AWARD IN THE NOVEL “THICKER THAN WATER,” BK Loren, Broomfield, CO
DANA
AWARD IN POETRY "ON THE LADDER,"et al., Laura-Gray Street,
Lynchburg, VA
DANA
AWARD IN SHORT FICTION "TOW,” Morgan McDermott, Evanston, IL
2001 DANA AWARDS
DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL, TUNNEL RAT, Danielle Trussoni, LaCrosse, Wisconsin. (TUNNEL RAT was later reworked as a memoir titled FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH and published in 2006. It went on to be named as one of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2006 in Nonfiction.)
DANA AWARD IN POETRY, "TRUE NORTH," et al., Ronald G. Wardall, Brooklyn, NY
DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION, "THE LAST GERONIMO,” Laren Stover, New York, NY
2000 DANA AWARDS
DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL: THE FINAL EFFORT OF THE ARCHER, Michael Pritchett, Overland Park, KS (Mr. Pritchett was a finalist in a previous year.)
DANA AWARD IN POETRY: "RAPT" ET AL., K.E. Allen, Ann Arbor, MI
DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION: "THE STEPHEN HAWKING DEATH ROW FAN CLUB," Robert C. Goodwin, South Windsor, CT
NOTE: DANA AWARDS 1996-1999 ARE NOT LISTED HERE. BUT JUST A FEW WORDS ABOUT OUR WINNERS IN GENERAL:
For the Dana Awards, all submissions are read blind at all levels. Anyone may win including authors who may already have either modest or extensive publishing records. But my hope with the Dana Awards is to discover writers who have been, until now, unrecognized.
That's why I was thrilled to learn when I phoned her that the winner of the first (1996) Dana Award in the Novel (Ellen Breck (Lindy) Coggeshall of Walpole, NH) had not published, had won no awards and had even been told early on that she couldn't write. She was a single mother working two jobs to raise three teenagers, so not only the recognition for her novel THE RABIES TREE but the $1,000 prize helped.
1997's Novel Award winner was Jennifer Natalya Fink, of New York City, for THE MIKVEH QUEEN. A New York editor saw the winners listing in Poets & Writers and asked through us to see MIKVEH QUEEN but ultimately did not take it. MIKVEH QUEEN and Ms. Fink's next novel have since been accepted for publication.
FOR QUESTIONS ONLY, E-MAIL AT THIS ADDRESS danaawards@pipeline.com