I can’t say what came first: my desire to write fantasy or my desire to play Dungeons & Dragons. I just know that they are and always have been inextricably linked in my imagination. I read fantasy from the age of four or five, but the realization that I...
Where is your usual starting point – in research, an image, the middle of a story, an outline? The place a poem begins varies for me. In some poems, like “Burning Trash,” I begin with an image – in that case, the image was of a fire burning inside an old...
By Anne Pinkerton Elizabeth Horneber is the first runner-up of SFWP’s 2015 Literary Awards Program for her book Chinese Red, a collection of connected essays about a girl who leaves home, falls for a country and a man, and then struggles to make sense of things when...
By Anne Pinkerton A.A. Balaskovits is the Grand Prize winner of SFWP’s 2015 Literary Awards Program for her book of stories Magic for Unlucky Girls, a collection that consists largely of re-imaginings of fairy tales, “though one is a retelling of Superman and one the...
By Lisa Marie Werhan Higher education? Check. Professional law career? Been there, done that. Successful career change? Piece of cake. Marathon? No problem. Published memoirist? Yes, Lisa Reisman has achieved that, too. Her personal and professional resumes speak...
GRAND PRIZE WINNER A.A. Balaskovits has work appearing in The Southeast Review, The Madison Review, Wigleaf, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and many others. She is the winner of Sequestrum’s 2015 New Writer’s Award. She currently lives in South Carolina. Magic for...
