Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Awards”
A few months back, I entered the Fall 2025 Adult Contest of the Oregon Poetry Association. One of the categories this time was called Extended Prompt. The rules were one page and one poem maximum in any form following the prompt, “Turning Point.” The judge, Richard Tillinghast, provided some additional guidance: “Write a poem about a turning point in your life, a landmark event or life-choice. Something—
good or bad—has happened that changes everything.”
My yet-unpublished prose poem, “Thresholds of More Oblivious Blossoming,” has received the First Honorable Mention in the Form/Prose Poem Category of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2024 Contest. The category judge, Rana Tahir, wrote…
In Fall 2012, I volunteered to be the judge for the New Poets category of the Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) contests. The OPA definition of a new poet is someone with no more than two poems published in print or online journals. Anything self-published or posted on a personal website or blog also counts as published…
What is a Pushcart Prize and what does it mean to be nominated? According to its website, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, “published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America – including Highest Honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.” Their annual nomination process is pretty straightforward…
My poem, “Learning to See,” won Third Place in the Theme—Ekphrasis category of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2023 Contest. I wrote about this poem in a recent Apostrophe Blog post, explaining the concept of Ekphrastic Poetry and how I came to write this particular poem….
I just found out this morning that two of my poems have been awarded Third Place in two categories of the Oregon Poetry Association Fall 2023 adult contests. The first, “provenance,” has placed in the Members Only category—the category name explains itself….
Not long after I returned to poetry writing, I began to enter my work in the adult contests sponsored by the Oregon Poetry Association. The Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) is a vibrant organization spreading its passion for poetry to every corner of the state of Oregon and beyond…
So I was ecstatic when one of my favorite authors of forever won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. So I bought a cake from the legendary Helen Bernhard’s of Portland, Oregon. And, after that, wrote a poem. Because who does not love Alice’s stories and chocolate cake as well?…
In December 2004, I was awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship—specifically, the Leslie Bradshaw Fellowship for Literary Nonfiction. What an honor! Several months later, the 2004 class of recipients was fêted at a lovely ceremony at the Wieden + Kennedy offices…
In the Spring 2023 Oregon Poetry Association poetry contests, I got three honorable mentions for some of my newer poems. Now to find publication homes for them! Here’s the skinny: Honorable Mention for “Of the Wild Bees Living in a Tree in the Alley” in the Wildlife Themed Category…
