Family Writing Contest Winners Announced

Congratulations to the winners of the Center for American Literary Studies' (CALS) Family Writing Contest! As part of the 2011 Centre County Reads program, featuring Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, Centre County residents and Penn State students were invited to submit work on a family related theme. 

Sean Goudie, the director of CALS, said "We were thrilled to receive a great number of entries to the CALS/CCR “Family” Writing Contest. The judges and I appreciate very much everyone's interest in the contest and the opportunity to read the entrants' work. Final decisions were extremely difficult to arrive at, the judges report, a testament to the overall quality of the entries."

The winners are:

Grand Prize Winner: Michelle K. Baker, Penn State Ph. D. candidate in the College of Communications, for “Wednesdays at the Q-Tip Diner”

Best Short Nonfiction: Lucy Green, Penn State MFA student, for "The Rule of Magic”

Best Short Fiction: Ben DeMeter, Penn State senior, for “Dig”

Honorable Mention: V. Jo Hsu, Penn State MFA student, for “Ghost Money”

Best Parody: Steven Deutsch, Centre County resident, for “Half-Broke Schwinns”

Best under-18 entry: a tie, between Margaret Rothrock, Centre County resident age 13, for “True Story”

and Katrina A. Verlinde, Centre County resident age 12, for “The Blizzard Family”