Fiction writer and poet Jeanne Bryner has agreed to serve as the juror for the 2011 Blanchan/Doubleday writing awards.
The Neltje Blanchan Award, $1,000, is given for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script which is informed by a relationship with the natural world.
The Frank Nelson Doubleday Award, $1,000, is given for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script written by a woman author.
POSTMARK DEADLINE IS OCTOBER 29, 2010
Printable applications will be available at the Wyoming Arts Council web site by Sept. 6, 2010. Applications also will be mailed to Wyoming writers on the WAC mailing list.
About our juror:
Jeanne Bryner was born in Appalachia and grew up in Newton Falls, Ohio. Her family was part of the outmigration from Greene County, Pennsylvania and Monongalia County, West Virginia.
A board-certified emergency room nurse, she is a graduate of Trumbull Memorial’s School of Nursing and Kent State University’s Honors College. She has received writing fellowships from Bucknell University (1992), the Ohio Arts Council (1997, 2007), and Vermont Studio Center (2009). Her new play, “Foxglove Canyon,” was performed this April in Akron, Ohio and her books in print are Breathless, Blind Horse: Poems, Eclipse: Stories, Tenderly Lift Me: Nurses Honored, Celebrated and Remembered and No Matter How Many Windows. One of her short stories, “Turn the Radio to a Gospel Station,” is included in the new anthology from Coffee House Press, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams.With the support of Hiram College’s Center for Literature and Medicine and Biomedical Humanities, her nursing poetry has been adapted for the stage and is being performed by Verb Ballets, Cleveland, Ohio. A community affiliate of Youngstown State’s Center for Working Class Studies, she frequently writes about working class issues. She teaches writing workshops in schools, cancer support groups and assisted living facilities. She lives with her husband near a dairy farm in Newton Falls, Ohio.
Here’s what poet Jim Daniels had to say about one of Bryner’s books:
“In Jeanne Bryner’s Eclipse, there’s a master storyteller at work. The rich textured world of these stories, and the strong refreshingly frank narrative voices, bring to life the everyday kindnesses and betrayals that mark the calendars of our lives. While the characters in these stories struggle, it is a struggle blessed with hope. A hope we can all carry with us into the future.”
