Previous winners

A NOTE 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.

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, and Starting 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 Word Beauty….

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.

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

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.

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:

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.

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.