By Donna Campbell Smith, Franklin County Arts Council
Franklin County Arts Council Writers’ Guild is sponsoring its third annual FCAC Writers’ Guild Carolina Prize in Writing contest. It is open to previously unpublished (This includes online publication) poetry, short stories, and essays or creative non-fiction. This year two prizes will be awarded, one for prose and the other poetry. Each prize will be $100.00 plus two copies of the journal and publication in the 2018 issue of County Lines: A Literary Journal. Up to five honorable mentions will also be named. They will receive publication in County Lines and one free copy. The deadline for entering is August 15, 2017.
Judges for the contest are Erin Knightley for the prose division and Valerie Macon with judge the poetry division.
Erin Knightley is the USA Today bestselling author of both historical and contemporary romance. Initially deciding to pursue a sensible career in science, she eventually came to her senses, leaving her practical side behind in order to write full time. Together with her tall, dark, and handsome husband and their two spoiled mutts, she is living her own Happily Ever After in North Carolina.
Valerie Macon is a NC poet living in Fuquay Varina. Her work appears in a wide diversity of venues from journals such as Clockhouse Review, magazines such as Pine Straw, O. Henry, and Salt, as well as Boston’s Three Penny News. Her poetry appears in numerous anthologies. She has won several awards from The NC Poetry Society, and was a Gilbert Chappell Distinguished Poet winner. She has written four books of poetry: Shelf Life, Sleeping Rough, A String of Black Pearls, and soon to be published, The Shape of Today (Main Street Rag). She runs a garden that feeds the homeless and hungry, and enjoys teaching poetry to seniors.
FCAC Writers’ Guild information is online at fcacarts.org/writers_guild.aspx.
