HOW ALL THIS STARTED
A NOTE FROM
MARY ELIZABETH
PARKER
I started the Dana Awards in 1996
(named after my husband Michael Dana since he's the financial backer, as
needed) as a way to recognize and reward excellent fiction and poetry.
My husband is a supporter of good
literature but not a writer himself (except of incisive business reports
and letters to the editor). But he did back a city-wide magazine years
before we met.
I'm a college professor and counselor
on a long hiatus, focusing on my own writing. I hold both an MFA in
creative writing and a Ph.D. in literature from the University of North
Carolina-Greensboro. I'm originally from Michigan. Michael's originally
from everywhere--holds quadruple citizenship and knows four languages.
Just so you'll know I'm a working
writer like you, I'll say that I have published, but my success is modest.
I'm usually the bridesmaid, rarely the bride. But I've published scores of
single poems, a full-length book of poems, a half-dozen short stories, and
a handful of essays in medium-distribution print literary journals, and
have lately branched into e-zines.
My full-length collection THE SEX GIRL
(no, it's not x-rated) was published in 1999 by Urthona Press,
Asheville, NC as winner of the Second Urthona Poetry Prize, William
Blake Poetry Series.
I've read essays for radio, and one
story was bought by NPR for their Sound of Writing but not produced due to
NEA cuts.
My short story "Guayaquil to Rock
Hill: The President of Ecuador Finds Love" was named among the top 25
finalists in STORY Magazine's 1997 Famous Short Fiction competition, and I
was among the top 25 in Glimmer Train's October 2001 Poetry Open.
In 1996, the cassette version of a
print anthology GROW OLD ALONG WITH ME, THE BEST IS YET TO BE (Papier
Mache Press, Watsonville, CA) in which I had a story, was 1 of 5 cassette
books nominated for a GRAMMY Award in the Non-Music, Spoken Word category
(my story "Papier-Mache" was read on cassette by CCH Pounder).
GROW OLD's cassette lost to Hillary Clinton's cassette version of IT TAKES
A VILLAGE
In 2000 my poem "Lake Woman" was published
in EARTH AND SOUL, an anthology published in Durham, NC and in its sister
region, Kostroma, Russia.
I've been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and
have two published chapbooks of poetry (THAT STUMBLING RITUAL, 1980,
Coraddi Press, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and BREATHING IN A
FOREIGN COUNTRY, 1994, winner of South Carolina's 1993 Kinloch Rivers
Memorial Competition).
I have two novels seeking publishers, LEILA
APPROACHING PARIS and ALBERT HASKINS' WOMEN, and a third in progress.
If you'd like to ferret out how I think and write,
check out an interview with me in the online journal MARGIN: Exploring
Modern Magical Realism, titled "One Poet's Paradox: Wanting to
Believe" at http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/margin/Parker.html
Best,
FOR QUESTIONS ONLY, E-MAIL AT THIS ADDRESS danaawards@pipeline.com