Announcing the 2019 Emerging Writer Award Winners

We are thrilled to announce the winners of the Marianne Russo Award, the Scotti Merrill Award, and the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award.

We continue to be amazed by the overall quality of the submissions we receive for our three Emerging Writer Awards. We thank all who applied, and we encourage you to keep writing and keep submitting. Our three-round review process is thorough, and we’d also like to thank each of our reviewers for reading along with us. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Without further ado:

The winners are…

Emerging Writer Award winners Ross Feeler, Michelle Peñaloza, and Joe Dornich (left to right).

MARIANNE RUSSO AWARD
for a novel-in-progress

Ross Feeler’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Potomac Review, Hypertext, New South, Story|Houston, The Common, Arcadia, and elsewhere. He reads submissions for The Masters Review. In 2013, he received his MFA in fiction from Texas State University, where he now teaches composition and literature. From 2013 to 2014, he served as writer-in-residence at the Clark House in Smithville, Texas. He lives just south of Austin.

SCOTTI MERRILL AWARD
for poetry—selected by Billy Collins

A proud daughter of immigrants, Michelle Peñaloza was born in the suburbs of Detroit and grew up in the suburbs of Nashville. She is author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes. Her work can be found in places like New England Review, Vinyl, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and The Collagist. Michelle lives in rural Northern California.

CECELIA JOYCE JOHNSON AWARD
for a short story

Joe Dornich is a PhD candidate in Texas Tech’s creative writing program where he also serves as the Managing Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review. Joe’s stories have won contests with South Central MLA, Fresher Writing, Master’s Review, and Carve Magazine. In addition to writing, Joe is also taking a mail-order course in veterinary medicine. His mailbox is often filled with sick kittens.

The Key West Literary Seminar Emerging Writer Awards recognize and support writers who possess exceptional talent and demonstrate potential for lasting literary careers. Each winner will join us in Key West for the 2019 Seminar and Writers’ Workshop Program, and receive a prize package that includes a $500 honorarium, the opportunity to appear on stage during the Seminar, and full support for travel and accommodations.

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