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2010 American Independent Writing Prizes Announced
Collins, Davis, Galuszka, Feely and Whyman Win
American Independent Writing Prizes
by Beryl Lieff Benderly, Prize Committee Chair
The American Independent Writing Prizes for 2010 were awarded at the June 12 conference to Mary Collins, Heather Lynne Davis, Peter Galuszka and Paula Whyman. The annual competition is open to all AIW members and recognizes outstanding freelance work.
Collins won the award for most significant book of the year for American Idle: A Journey Through Our Sedentary Culture. The book, an engrossing, engaging and original examination of the role of exercise in American life,” according to the judges, grew out of the essay that won WIW’s very first writing prize, the predecessor of the AIW prizes. David A. Taylor received honorable mention in the book category for Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America, which “opens a fascinating window onto a unique and uniquely important period in the creative life of America,” the judges said.
The prize for personal essay went to Feely for “The Wall: A Memoir” published in Hurricane Review. It is “notable for its effective use of an arresting and original metaphor to convey the complex and often challenging emotional reality of the author’s immigrant experience,” the judges said.
The poetry winner is Davis for “Casino,” published in the online journal Exhale. The poem “sings and clatters, just where it should” to relate the experience of “gambling on a pregnancy later in life,” the judges found.
Galuszka’s “Massey’s Dark Side” in Style Weekly of Richmond, VA won the prize for reported nonfiction which gives a “prescient … detailed and compelling account of a rogue company” whose “multiple transgressions became painfully evident months later in the explosion that tragically killed 29 West Virginia coal miners” the judges said.
The category produced two honorable mentions, Tom Price for “Future of Journalism: Will newspapers’ decline weaken democracy?” in the CQ Researcher, and Ellen Woods for “A Hero is a sandwich. I’m a paratrooper” in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The former is “a comprehensive and authoritative report on the news business and its impact on society’ that “perceptively analyz[es] its current state and assess[es] its future in the developing digital age,” the judges said. They called it a “riveting read” about “one soldier’s valor in Iraq and in the long, painful aftermath of service there.”
Whyman won the short fiction prize for “Statute of Limitations,” which skillfully explores the “ tension between surrendering to self-interest or taking responsibility for the life [people] have created,” the judges said. The judges gave honorable mention to B.V. Lawson’s “FM for Murder,” a mystery story that “does a great job of subtly planting motive,” they said.
The 2011 competition will be announced in the fall. The committee, chaired by Beryl Lieff Benderly, included writers Joseph Barbato, Jeff Richards, C.M. Mayo, Eugene Meyer, and Lester Reingold.
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