I’m back from a two-day mini-vacation with my husband (yay!) and I’ve got some good news to share!
I was named an Honorable Mention for the Loft McKnight Fellowship, a much-coveted annual award here in Minnesota. The winner, Debra Frasier, gets $25,000 (hence the coveting!).
The Honorable Mentions (my crit group partner Connie Van Hoven, Lynne "the President just bought her book for his daughters" Jonell, Linda Glaser, and I) get…a nice email from The Loft Literary Center and a paragraph of lovely feedback from the judge, editor Andrea Welch from Beach Lane Books.
OK, I would have liked the feedback AND the $25,000. Maybe someday:>) I’ve been an Honorable Mention before, in 2004, and the poetry collection that I submitted then has never found a home with a publisher. Fingers crossed that this year’s manuscript, a rhyming picture book called ZAP! CLAP! BOOM!, fares better, eventually. But however it ends up, it’s great to read (and reread and reread) Andrea’s feedback, which includes "each word had been perfectly chosen," "dream project for the right artist," "rhyme…feels organic to the story," and "This story would be a terrific read aloud."
It feels like winning each time I read that!