Current Winners

A NOTE OF ENCOURAGEMENT to all entrants: THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW named as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year in Non-Fiction in 2006 our winner of the Dana Award in the Novel. To explain: Danielle Trussoni's novel, originally titled Tunnel Rat, won our 2001 Novel Award, was then re-worked as a memoir of her relationship with her father, a Viet Nam vet, and was published in 2006 as FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH--which was then named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 in Nonfiction.

2004 Novel Award Winner Stephen Lovely's Irreplaceable You was published and went on to become a bestseller.

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 the novel but ultimately did not take it. The Mikveh Queen and Ms. Fink's next novel have since been accepted for publication.

Most recently, we learned that 2010 Short Fiction finalist Barry Brennessel's short story collection, Reunion, is slated to be published by Lethe Press.

DANA AWARD WINNERS 2010

DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL: Patrick E. Horrigan, New York, NY, for Portraits at an Exhibition.

First Honorable Mention: Michael Bourne, Brooklyn, NY. Second Honorable Mention: Jenna Evans, Belfast, ME.

Other finalists: Martha Mattingly Payne, Atlanta, GA; Aaron Reynolds, Houston, TX; Hollis Seamon, Kinderhook, NY; Vicki Salloum, New Orleans, LA; Chandler Klang Smith, New York, NY; Melanie Smith, Walpole, MA; Kristen Millares Young, Seattle, WA.

DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION: Nicole Louise Reid, Newburgh, IN, for A Purposeful Violence.

First Honorable Mention: Bridgette Shade, Pittsburgh, PA. Second Honorable Mention: Patricia Grace King, Chicago, IL.

Other finalists: Rafael Alvarez, Linthicum, MD; Jacob M. Appel, New York, NY; Elise Atchison, Livingston, MT; Barry Brennessel, Washington, DC; David Christian, Iowa City, IA; Jack Pulaski, Marshfield, VT; Heather Sappenfield, Vail, CO.

DANA AWARD IN POETRY: Julie Weber, Ashland, OR, for Ellipsis et al.

First Honorable Mention: Nadine Sabra Meyer, Gettysburg, PA; Second Honorable Mention: Bruce Bond, Denton, TX.

Other finalists: Ellen Bass, Santa Cruz, CA; Jessica Henricksen, New Orleans, LA; Michael Derrick Hudson, Fort Wayne, IN; Alison Jarvis, New York, NY; Karen Winterburn, Glenview, IL; Bradford Winters, New York, NY; Margot Wizansky, Brookline, MA.

About Our Winners

Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, PATRICK E. HORRIGAN received his BA from Catholic University and his PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of WIDESCREEN DREAMS: GROWING UP GAY AT THE MOVIES (University of Wisconsin Press), an analysis of several popular films from the 1960s and 70s, including The Sound of Music and The Poseidon Adventure, and their impact on the mind and imagination of a child growing up in suburban America. His one-act play, MESSAGES FOR GARY: A DRAMA IN VOICEMAIL, composed entirely of answering machine messages received by the gay activist and socialist scholar Gary Lucek, was a critically-acclaimed hit of the 1999 New York International Fringe Festival. His essay "The Inner Life of Ordinary People" appears in the anthology SCREENING DISABILITY: ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND DISABILITY (University Press of America), ed. by Anthony Enns and Christopher R. Smit. He wrote the catalogue essay for Ernesto Pujol's 2001 exhibition of paintings, LOSS OF FAITH, at New York's Galeria Ramis Barquet, as well as several essays on art, film, and popular culture for Vice magazine and Gay Community News. His 2005 interview with the actor and writer John Epperson, aka Lypsinka, is part of the permanent archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Currently, he is writing a novel about the fight to save New York's old Penn Station. Since 1993, he has taught English at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University. He and his husband live in Manhattan.

NICOLE LOUISE REID is the author of the novel In the Breeze of Passing Things (MacAdam/Cage, 2003), the fiction chapbook Girls (RockSaw Press, 2009), and the forthcoming story collection So There! (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, Fall 2011). Her award-winning short stories have appeared in the Southern Review, Other Voices,Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, Yemassee, and Meridian. Recipient of the Willamette Award in Fiction, she teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Indiana. She lives in Newburgh, Indiana.

She says: "This story, A Purposeful Violence, snuck up on me. It is the third story-chapter, and oldest chronologically, of a triptych novella--something with as much market oomph as a tethered rock. Years ago, a friend told me the story of his shady uncle, whose car had exploded in fire and killed him at 30. Thirty years later, this friend received a call from a nursing home searching for next of kin. The (supposedly dead) uncle was alive and going senile, or maybe that was a ploy, too; my friend didn't know. All he knew was that his mother refused to see the uncle. That was all he ever told me. The story stayed with me--why did she refuse to see him? Had he purposefully faked his death? Why? That was the first story-chapter of the book and once done writing it, I still had questions. I'd invented a past love story between my friend's mother and her brother-in-law (the uncle) and I wanted to bring that to life as well as the two brothers, her husband and the uncle, as young men. Last came A Purposeful Violence, in which the two brothers are young boys. This was, by far, the hardest of the three pieces to write and it took me three years to finish it. It is the seat of trouble for the Parsten family, the source of so much going-wrong. I am most proud of this story. "

JULIE WEBER says: "I am largely a self taught poet. In the past year, I have been a finalist in a handful of national poetry contests, among them the Oscar Wilde, Joy Harjo and Alligator Junipercompetitions. Prose poems and prose writing have been finalists in the Chroma and Orlandocompetitions. The Dana Award is the first award I have won.

"In the fall of 2010, I finished a poetry manuscript, and then, a few months later, brought a chapbook to completion (both are under submission). I was a Lambda Literary Fellow for 2010. In addition to writing, I have been doing Clinical Social Work and counseling for over a decade."

2009 DANA AWARDS

DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL: Tippets Jensen, Gresham, OR, for The Good Deed.

First Honorable Mention: Boman Desai, Chicago, IL; Second Honorable Mention: Annie Liontas, Mt. Tabor, NJ. Other finalists: Adam Ares, Chicopee, MA; Annie Dawid, Westcliffe, CO; Steve Gehrke, Gettysburg, PA; N.S. Koenings, Somerville, MA; Robert McKean, Newton, MA; Emily Pease, Williamsburg, VA; Kim Taylor, Portland, OR.

DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION: Matthew Pitt, Gulfport, MS, for A Thief at Either Side.

First Honorable Mention: Patricia Brieschke, Waccabuc, NY; Second Honorable Mention: Skye Anicca, Las Cruces, NM. Other finalists: C.J. Doza, Nashville, TN; Larry Hill, Fresno, CA; Marjorie Kennedy, Seattle, WA; Ben Loory, Los Angeles, CA; James Sie, Los Angeles, CA; Scott Winokur, Berkeley, CA; Joseph Zaitchik, Wayland, MA.

DANA AWARD IN POETRY: Jeanne Marie Beaumont, New York, NY, for her 5-poem series "Letter from Limbo".

First Honorable Mention: Valerie Wallace, Chicago, IL; Second Honorable Mention: Honoree Fanon Jeffers, Norman, OK. Other finalists: Hadara Bar-Nadav, Kansas City, MO; Starkey Flythe, Augusta, GA; Teresa Leo, Lansdowne, PA; Leslie Anne Mcilroy; Pittsburgh, PA; Nadine Sabra Meyer, Gettysburg, PA; Rita Mae Reese, Madison, WI; Michael Spence, Tukwila, WA.

ABOUT OUR WINNERS

TIPPETS JENSEN was born in Cache Valley, Utah and has lived in New York, Idaho, California, and Hawaii. She is a descendant on one side from the first English settlers to reach America, and on the other from East-German émigrés from Dresden. She has a B.A. and graduate study in English literature. She has taught farm kids in a small turkey-ranching town, and has worked on a high-forest tree farm, as a copywriter in advertising, and in a historic public library. Her work has been a finalist for the Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship and the Dana Award in the Novel, was short-listed twice for the Heekin Group Foundation Fellowship (with a Finalist Special Mention for the Novel), and was a semifinalist for the Dana Awards, the Peter Taylor Prize, and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. She lives and writes in Oregon.

Of her writing life, she says: "I grew up in the country and wrote my first stories perched in the branches of an apple tree when I should have been weeding. I've been writing ever since and would have to say that my greatest accomplishment is sticking with it. I'm working on a trilogy of novels about three families with origins in the same small, isolated town in Idaho. Outsiders in their own given world, they are destined--no matter how far they may stray--to forever struggle against the Mormon heritage that shaped them."

MATTHEW PITT, a native of St. Louis, is a graduate of Hampshire College and NYU, where he was a New York Times fellow. His first book of fiction, the short story collection Attention Please Now, won the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, and was published this March (www.matthew-pitt.com). He's now at work on a novel. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American,The Southern Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review,New Letters, Best New American Voices, and elsewhere. Stories of his were cited in the Best American Short Stories,Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and have earned awards from the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Santa Fe Writers Project, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Salem College Center for Women Writers.

JEANNE MARIE BEAUMONT won the National Poetry Series for her first book, Placebo Effects(Norton, 1997). Her second book, Curious Conduct, was published by BOA Editions (2004). Her next book, Burning of the Three Fires, is coming out from BOA in fall of 2010. She was co-editor of the anthology The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales (Story Line Press, 2003). She is a past winner of the Greensboro Review poetry prize, and her poems have been published in anthologies including Good Poems for Hard Times, Poetry Daily, When She Named Fire, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, andStarting Today: 100 Poems for Obama's First 100 Days. She is the director of the annual Frost Place Advanced Poetry Seminar, is a member of the Stonecoast MFA poetry faculty, and also teaches at the Unterberg Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City. She has lived in New York City since 1983.

First Honorable Mention: Steve Mitchell, Winston-Salem, NC. Second Honorable Mention: Waimea Williams, Kaneohe, HI. Other finalists: Barbara Delacuesta, Island Heights, NJ; Sandra Fontana and Lindy MacDonald (double author), Vero Beach, FL; Sara Fraser, Belmont, MA; Agustin Maes, Berkeley, CA; Karen L. Simpson, Ann Arbor, MI; Kathryn Wilder, Ha’iku, Maui, HI; Waimea Williams, Kaneohe, HI (for a 2d novel).

First Honorable Mention: Robert Morgan Fisher, Woodland Hills, CA. Second Honorable Mention: Fred McGavran, Cincinnati, OH. Other finalists: Jacob M. Appel, New York, NY (for 2 short stories); Jim Bainbridge, Los Angeles, CA; Cary Groner, Tucson, AZ; Li Miao Lovett, San Francisco, CA; Lynn L. Sloan, Evanston, IL; Lynn M. Stegner, Point Reyes Station, CA.

DANA AWARD IN POETRY: Allen Braden, Lakewood, WA, for a 5-poem cycle entitled Taboo against the WordBeauty….

First Honorable Mention: Willa Granger, Mamaroneck, NY. Second Honorable Mention: Sassy Ross, Brooklyn, NY. Other finalists: Ellen Bass, Santa Cruz, CA; Ewa Chrusciel, New London, NH; Dina Elenbogen, Evanston, IL; Christina Hutchins, Albany, CA; Jacquelyn Merrill, Los Angeles, CA; Allison Smythe, Rocheport, MO; Kathleen Spivack, Watertown, MA.

REBECCA BERG was born into a family of musicians in 1962. For the first thirty years of her life, she was a compulsive reader, and earned a doctorate in English literature from Cornell University. Then she began writing novels about musicians. To support the writing habit, she teaches for the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, works as staff reporter for the Journal of Environmental Health, and does freelance editing.

In 2000, her first novel, Sarah's Memoir, was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel Fellowship Contest. An excerpt appeared in 2001 in the Five Fingers Review under the title "A History of Song." Another excerpt appeared in Word Riot in 2009. An excerpt from her second novel, Filigree, took third prize in the F-Magazine 2005 Novel-in-Progress Contest. A previous draft of Julio's Ghost placed on the "Short List for Finalists" in the 2007 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.

PATRICIA BRIESCHKE told us: “When I was eight, I wrote a series of poems for my best friend for her birthday. She said, ‘You didn't write these; you copied them from a book.’ That was the high point of my writing career, and maybe its beginning. Ever since, every submission is followed by that months-long pause while I wait to hear the words: ‘This is good. We want it.’ Sometimes it comes; more often it's a movie ticket-sized rejection [slip], or a quick, easy no-thank-you e-mail. But I hear the words now and know that I'm doing something right.

When I taught writing for 10 years, I struggled right along with my students to master the craft of story. It took forever to trust my imagination. The breakthrough came when I finally realized that sticking with what you know does not necessarily serve the story. Finding my voice, away from the falsetto that wants to impress, along with developing compassion for my sometimes ugly characters, has guided my writing from the naive and amateurish toward some crooked road to maturity. With each new story, I take a risk or two and get stronger. If only life were this satisfying.”

ALLEN BRADEN’s first book A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood is forthcoming in 2010 from the VQR Poetry Series/University of Georgia Press. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from Artist Trust of Washington State as well as the Emerging Writers Prize from Witness magazine, the Grolier Poetry Prize and other honors. Recently, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives and writes in Lakewood, Washington.

2007 DANA AWARDS

DANA AWARD IN PORTFOLIO: Joan Frank, Santa Rosa, CA, for two novels, “Make It Stay,” and “Scarlet and Melanie,” and one short story, “Sandy Candy.” First Honorable Mention: Nikki Nojima Louis, Seattle, WA; Second Honorable Mention, Justin Quarry, Jonesboro, AR.

Other finalists: Jacqueline Curry, Baltimore, MD; Christina Forrest, Grove, OK; Pierre Hauser, New York, NY; Regina La Barre, New York, NY; Penny Mickelbury, Los Angeles, CA; Patrick Tucker, Baltimore, MD; Charles Wyatt, Nashville, TN.

DANA AWARD IN THE NOVEL: Thad Nodine, Santa Cruz, CA, for “Going Home.” First Honorable Mention: Carol Scarvalone Kushner, Red Hook, NY; Second Honorable Mention: W.T. Moore, Bellingham, WA.

Other finalists: Todd Michael Cox, West Bend, WI; L. Charles Fiore, Chicago, IL; Andrea Hairston, Florence, MA; Tippets Jensen, Troutdale, OR; Elizabeth Kadetsky, New York, NY; Joseph L. Mackin, New York, NY; Lee Reilly, Chicago, IL.

DANA AWARD IN SHORT FICTION: Deanne Lundin, Ann Arbor, MI, for "What A Man Can Carry." First Honorable Mention: Lysley Tenorio, San Francisco, CA; Second Honorable Mention: Josh Rolnick, Akron, OH.

Other finalists: Ray Blackburn, New York, NY; Gregg Cusick, Durham, NC; JoeAnn Hart, Gloucester, MA; Suzanne Kingsbury, Brattleboro, VT; Matthew Pitt; Biloxi, MS; Pedro Ponce, Canton, NY; Holly Scoville, West Hartford, CT.

DANA AWARD IN POETRY: Sandra Stone, Portland, OR, for “Reading the Flamingo’s Smile” et al. First Honorable Mention: Caroline Goodwin, Montara, CA; Second Honorable Mention: Suzanne Burns, Bend, OR.

Other finalists: Carolyn Creedon, Charlottesville, VA; LuAnn Keener-Mikenas, Madison Heights, VA; Lisa Ortiz; San Francisco, CA; P.S. Page, Menlo Park, CA; Jennifer Perrine, Des Moines, IA; Arthur Plotnik, Chicago, IL; Melissa Stein, San Francisco, CA.

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.

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.
i

2004 PORTFOLIO AWARD: JOAN CORWIN, Evanston, IL, for short stories "Details," "Elm," "Perspective"

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.

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 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 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:

In 2006, our 2001 Novel Award winner Danielle Trussoni's novel Tunnel Rat was published as a completely reworked memoir version, under the new title Falling through the Earth. It was named among the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books in Nonfiction for 2006.

2004 Novel Award Winner Stephen Lovely's Irreplaceable You was published and went on to become a bestseller.

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.