If a story is in you, it has to come out.
—William Faulkner
William Faulkner, 1925
The Faulkner – Wisdom Competition was in 1992 and first prizes were awarded in 1993. There were just three categories to begin. Adelaide Benjamin Wisdom was a board member and her family foundation was the major underwriter in the initial years. The competition name honors Faulkner and her father, William B.Wisdom, who assembled and donated to Tulane University an extensive collection of Faulkner memorabilia. New categories have been added and today’s total is nine: Book of Fiction (Novels and Collections of stories with a common narrative theme), Book of Non-Fiction (Non-Fiction books and collections of essays of same theme), Novella, Short Story, Book-in-Progress (Fiction and Non-Fiction), Essay, Poetry Collection (with poems addressing a common theme), Individual Poem, and Short Story by a High School Student. As the number of categories and entries have expanded and with both media promotion and word of mouth, our geographical reach as grown and today the entries come from most states and territories and an increasing number of entries from foreign countries. For two years now, the winner of the High School category has been a student in China, for instance. We are happy to report that the competition is alive and well and on its way back to receiving pre-COVID levels of entries. This could not be possible without the ongoing support of private donors, foundations, and corporations, who have underwritten competition management and prizes for winners.
2024’s Competition Angels
The Deming Foundation: Bertie Deming Smith
Book of Fiction
Susan & Charles Schadt
Book of Non-Fiction
Jana Napoli
In Memory of Ana Napoli
Novella
Faulkner House Books: Devereaux Bell, Garner & Permele Robinson
Short Story
The Ruth U. Fertel Foundation: Randy Fertel
Book-in-Progress
Michael Wilkinson, Partner, French Quarter Realty
Poetry Collection
Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Company: Guy Williams, Michael Carter
Essay
David Speights in Memory of Marti Speights
Individual Poem
Hartwig Moss Insurance Agency
In Memory of Hartwig Moss, III and Nancy Moss
High School Short Story
2023-2024 BOOK OF FICTION
Winner:
Indiana Queer, a novel by Michael Sadowski of Rinebeck, NY
Comments of the 2023-2024 Category Judge, Literary Agent Jeff Kleinman:
Beautifully written, with a strong voice and a compelling protagonist, the novel really delivers: great characters, solid plot, and heartrending themes.
Michael Sadowski is a writer whose work ranges from memoir to fiction to research on youth development and education. His memoir, Men I’ve Never Been, was named one of the Best Gay and Lesbian Books of All Time by Book Authority and was shortlisted for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom nonfiction award. His 2016 book Safe Is Not Enough was featured by NPR and was cited by GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings as “the most important book written on LGBTQ issues in education in my lifetime.” Michael’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, LGBTQ Nation, The Advocate, and the Harvard Education Letter, for which he won a National Press Club Award. He has been a faculty member at Harvard and Stanford universities and is currently a professor and administrator at Bard College.
Runner-up
A Tale of Five Tigers by Ellen Breck Coggeshall of Barnstable, Cape Cod, MA
Judge’s Comment:
The uniquely compelling premise really drew me in, and the vivid variety of climates and locales lent surprise and excitement.
Ellen Coggeshall’s life Highlights to date: surviving getting treed for 14 hours overnight by two lions in northern Kenya, and hunted by Somalian poachers; again surviving getting shot at while crossing Afghanistan in a decrepit jeep; raising three children for 13 years in a New Hampshire forest cabin bereft of electricity or water; and after re-entering the modern world, single parenting three magnificent teenagers to adulthood, while working three jobs at once. Now holed up in an ancestral cedar-shingled boathouse on Cape Cod, she writes full-time.
2023-2024 BOOK OF NON-FICTION
It’s a Tie!
Co-Winner:
Slow Drive by Randy Demon of Monroe, LA
Comments by the category Judge, Publisher, Cindy Spiegel:
Denmon’s memoir about rebuilding and driving an 80-year-old Ford truck more than 3,000 miles from coast to coast on the hundred-year-old Lincoln Highway is a fascinating intersection of America’s past and present as well as one man’s determined journey to live out his dream. It invites us to slow down and see the country around us anew through the eyes of our companionable narrator, and as the trip gains in momentum, the narrative picks up speed, becoming a gripping adventure.
Randy Denmon, a Louisiana native, is a successful civil engineer practicing in Lafayette and Monroe, LA, when not writing. Kensington Publishing has released four of his novels. He has been a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, the Ben Franklin Award, and a finalist in the Faulkner- Wisdom Competition several times. Off the Grid, Randy’s first foray into non-fiction, won the Society’s 2015 Gold Medal for best narrative non-fiction book, a rollicking, picaresque tale of two guys going off the grid to drive an all-electric Tesla sedan from Louisiana to the country of Panama, a journey that would be a hardship trip in a gasoline-powered car and a brazen act of bravery to set out in an electric car through primitive areas of readily available energy sources and have the worst, scariest roads with the most bandits in the Western Hemisphere.
Co-Winner
In Search of the Thickest Towel by Liza Porter
Judge’s Comments:
Porter’s memoir-in-essays of finding herself after a childhood and young adulthood of hardship and violence is voicey, moving, and engaging. The writing is bold, direct, and often beautifully poetic. It is an ultimately triumphant and inspiring story of learning how to live despite
the odds and circumstances, driven by a fierce intelligence, a knack for storytelling, and
stylish writing.
Liza Porter’s full-length collection of poems,
Del Bac, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. It was a finalist for the 2004 WILLA Award (Women Writing the West). Keep the Singing (FLP) was published in 2021, and Red Stain (FLP 2014) was finalist for both the 2015 Arizona New Mexico Book Award and the 2015 WILLA Award (Women Writing the West). Porter was founding director of the Other Voices Women’s Reading Series at Antigone Books in Tucson, AZ. Her work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies.
Her non-fiction has been recognized in Best American Essays series.
Runner-up
The Card by Steve Kash of Terre Haute, IN
Judge’s Comments:
A memoir of coming into adulthood, The Card is a propulsive tale of a young man’s search for his purpose and direction as he travels the world looking for meaning. With humor and insight, it poignantly captures the tension between the doubt and desire for belief in the future that so many of us have experienced.
Steve Kash is a freelance and non-fiction writer, who spent many years teaching developmental writing at a local community college. His love for hiking and travel provided him with background for his non-fiction book, The Card, which details the seemingly uncanny interconnectedness of events passing into his life. Steve’s articles have appeared in several publications in Indiana and Illinois as well as AutoWeek, Western Horseman,
and Grit.
2023-2024 NOVELLA
Winner
No Such Agency by Michael Ditchfield of Martha’s Vineyard, MA
Category Judge Lawrence William Coates had this to say about the novella:
No Such Agency is a crackling and suspenseful spy story set during the Cold War years. It places its main character, the ironically named Mr. Lucky, in a world of mixed loyalties and hidden identities and motives, while he simultaneously aspires to the stereotypical 1950s American Dream of home and family. The narrative maintains a relentless pace as dangers mount and nuclear secrets are at stake. Mr. Lucky finally helps resolve the mystery, though he is left living in a world of moral ambiguity. No Such Agency is a very accomplished novella, taking readers through dilemmas and conflict to a satisfying resolution that is not quite a happy ending.
Michael Ditchfield is a writer of novels, plays, haiku, essays, and short stories.
A quarter-century of practicing social work taught him that life is fragile, life is dangerous, everyone is wounded, yet people do heroic, selfless, and beautiful things. He tries to capture that spirit in his writing. He previously won the Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for his essay, Zen and the Art of Dementia.
Runner-up
Hurt People by Randall Silvas of Mercer, PA
Judge’s Comments:
Hurt People burdens its main character with an impossible and anguishing task – disposing of the remains of the unborn niece he’d hoped to love. The main character, Garrett, has a painful backstory of parental abuse and a motorcycle accident that left his face scarred and has made him feel unlovable, and he had hoped to find a redemptive love in the child of his sister, with whom he lives. When she chooses to end the pregnancy and gives him the task of finding a place to bury the remains, he embarks on a dark odyssey, seeking to understand himself and his fate. The journey, which takes him to the graves of his parents and to other points of his past, is deeply moving.
Randall Silvas is the internationally acclaimed author of 24 books of fiction and nonfiction. Also a prize-winning playwright and produced screenwriter, he is a prolific essayist. His many literary awards include the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, and a Doctor of Letters degree awarded for “distinguished literary achievement.”
Runner-up
Letters to Trout Fishing in America by Stephen Matthew Smythe of Naples, NY
Judge’s Comments:
Like its inspiration, Letters to Trout Fishing in America offers short fragmentary pieces that rise to the level of the prose poem. The novella is deeply imbued with an appreciation of rivers, fish, fly fishing, while also invoking broader environmental issues.
Matt Smythe is a writing professor who lives in western New York. His book of poetry, Revision of a Man, came out in 2022, and he has had stories, essays, and poetry published in The Flyfish Journal, Drake Magazine, Southern Culture on the Fly, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and numerous anthologies and literary journals. Matt graduated from SUNY Brockport’s creative writing program and has a master’s degree from George Mason University, where he studied poetry in the MFA program. He writes Glorious Mayhem on Substack.
SHORT STORY
Winner
Slot Machine by Andrew Plattner, Atlanta, GA
Comments by the 2024 Judge of the Short Story Category,
Fiction Writer Moira Crone:
I choose the short story Slot Machine for the winner of the competition, as the world it depicts is remarkably and believably drawn. Its characters are hangers-on and second-tier survivors in the shadows of the glamorous world of the winners’ circles in horse racing. It is a fascinating, and unusual milieu. The author’s rendering of diminished possibilities amid persistent dreams, however, is universal.
Andrew 
Plattner has published four books of literary fiction. His latest collection, Dixie Luck, includes Terminal, the gold medal-winning novella at the 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition. Dixie Luck earned a silver medal for Literary Fiction at the 2019 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Plattner’s other works include Offerings from a Rust Belt Jockey (winner, Dzanc Books’ Mid-Career Novel Award), A Marriage of Convenience (finalist, Townsend Prize) and Winter Money (winner, Flannery O’Connor Award). While a graduate student in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, his short story writing earned a Henfield Prize. Of late, Andy’s stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Epoch, New World Writing and The Chattahoochee Review.
Runner-up
Selfie by Yoruba Baltrip-Coleman of New Orleans, LA
Judge’s Comments:
Selfie is a seamless rendering of a very young black teenage girl’s struggles to find a consistent self, and a direction in life, in these sped-up, exploitative times of social media, sketchy influencers, and perilous pressures.
Yoruba Baltrip-Coleman grew up in Reno, NV but after living in New Orleans for 27 years, considers herself a New Orleanian. Her fiction includes literary fiction, urban fantasy and YA fiction. Her current poetry collection is Tangles, Knots and Knaps—more than and not just a bane of shame on a little black girl’s mane to relax. A finalist in the Faulkner –Wisdom Competition in 2017 for both the poetry and novella categories and short-listed in 2018 for poetry, in 2019 she was runner-up in the poetry category.
Runner-up:
Box Canyon by David Pelzer of Highland Park, IL
Judges CommentBox Canyon begins in another fascinating world—that of the illegal trade in rare desert plants for profit and moves from there into a broader look at Arizona’s harsh environs and rough mix of cultures, including Mormon and Hispanic. Issues of ethnic, legal, religious, and class distinctions—and the strong temptations to boundaries—are the subject here, well delineated.
David Alan Pelzer is a former agricultural journalist, based in Highland Park IL. His stories have appeared in the 2019 volume of Hemingway Shorts, and the anthologies Turning Points and Meaningful Conflicts, published by Windy City Publishers in Chicago. His upcoming novel The Blue Guitar is a finalist in this year’s Piper’s Alley Faulkner Society’s “Books in Progress” category.
2023-2024 BOOK- IN-PROGRESS
Winner
Rescue by Minrose Clayton Gwin, Albuquerque, NM
Comments By Category Judge, Literary Agent Deborah Grosvenor:
Based on a true story, this topical novel tells the story of a woman whose mundane life is transformed when she decides to rescue a small child next door whom she suspects is being abused. Told in a strong, engaging voice, the book is part thriller, part social commentary, using a suspenseful, even humorous, narrative to illuminate the very real problem of child abuse and how sometimes risking everything can lead to unexpected fulfillment.
Minrose Clayton Gwin’s fourth novel, Beautiful Dreamers,has just been released. Other
recent books are are the novels The Accidentals, Promise, and The Queen of Palmyra; a memoir, Wishing for Snow, and Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement. A native of Tupelo, MS, Minrose has been a writer all of her working life, starting out as a newspaper and wire service reporter and working in Mobile, Atlanta, Nashville, and Knoxville. She has taught as a professor at universities around the country, most recently at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and spent many summers leading creative writing workshops in New Mexico.
Runner-up
Istanbul Crossing, Timothy Jay Smith, Nice, France
Judge’s Comments
In this coming-of-age literary thriller, Ahdaf, a gay Syrian, after watching his cousin executed by ISIS for being homosexual, escapes to Istanbul where he becomes both a smuggler of refugees and a double agent working for the Americans against ISIS. The author clearly knows this world well, bringing alive the world of terrorism and the plight of refugees and skillfully interweaving throughout Ahdaf’s personal story, one of tough choices, loss, love and ultimately hope.
Timothy Jay Smith—raised crisscrossing America pulling a small green trailer behind the family car—developed a ceaseless wanderlust that has taken him around the world many times. En route, he’s found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists, Indian Chiefs and Indian tailors: he’s hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that’s seen him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through war zones and Occupied Territories, represent the U.S. at the highest levels of foreign governments, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-days crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail. Tim brings the same energy to his writing that he brought to a distinguished career, and as a result, he has won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays in numerous prestigious competitions. He won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the Paris Literary Prize) for his novel, A Vision of Angels. Kirkus Reviews called a second novel, Cooper’s Promise, “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of the Best Books of 2012. Fire on the Island won the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for the novel. Tim has been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize for his short story, Stolen Memories. His stage play, How High the Moon, won the prestigious Stanley Drama Award, and his screenplays have won competitions sponsored by the American Screenwriters Association, WriteMovies, Houston WorldFest, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Fresh Voices, StoryPros, and the Hollywood Screenwriting Institute. He is the founder of the Smith Prize for Political Theater.
2023-2024 ESSAY
Winner
Warehousing the Elderly by Gail Waldstein of Denver, CO
Comments About the winning essay by the 2023-2024 Judge,
Journalist Jack Davis:
The winner of the Essay is the misnamed account of how the world looks from inside hospital rooms, surgical suites and “senior living” establishments to a single brave woman surprised as she nears 80 with a difficult and dangerous cancer “Warehousing the Elderly” does not, contrary to its title, describe nursing homes and callous care. Instead it offers a spirited and cheering succession of friendships and family connections and life-giving discoveries, victories over decline, even when seen through the worsening eyes of macular degeneration. The author is very much alive — and alert and observant and often wryly funny. I can’t wait to meet her.
Gail Waldstein, M.D., was a pediatric pathologist for 37 years and single-parented three children for 15years. She started writing in the ‘90s and has captured awards in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Her work appears in Nimrod, New Letters, Zone 3, The Iowa Review, and other journals. Two of her essays have been nominated for Pushcart awards. Fellowships include the Colorado Council for Arts, Helene Wurlitzer, and Rocky Mountain Women’s foundations. Her winning poetry chapbooks include: After Image, 2006,
The Haunting, 2014, and the collection To Quit this Calling, Firsthand Tales of a Pediatric Pathologist, 2006. In addition to her 2024 gold medal for her essay, she is a runner-up with three other poets, for the 2023-2024 poetry collection entry,
The Four Faces of Eve.
Runner-up
Psychobabble by Garry Wallace of Powell, WY
The Judge’s Comments:
“Psychobabble” describes a professor of psychology adjusting to imminent retirement, a new partner and decades-old, deepening and sometimes debilitating pain. A scientist, he leads us readers through the literature of pain management growing above drug addiction as he pushes strongly past 70.
Garry Wallace has an MFA in nonfiction writing from Bennington College, VT. He has had ten personal essays honored as Notable in Best American Essays and has published Biography of a Bird Dog: raising a Labrador Retriever in Wyoming and, Meeting Cormac McCarthy: Plus 9 Notable Essays. Three Old Sheds, an essay about the place where he lives in Wyoming, was First Runner-Up in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition in 1997 and his essays have placed numerous times since. He he recently retired after 40 years of teaching college biology. Garry says: “I am very grateful to the competition administrators for their assistance over the years.”
Runner-up
Hey, Gallant by Patricia Gallant Weich of New York, NY
The Judge’s Comments:
“Hey, Gallant” is the sweet account of a lifetime’s teenage friendship kept delicately alive and rewarding throughout delicate annual contacts until we reach the present late-in-life contentment.
Pat Gallant Weich is proud to be a multiple Faulkner – Wisdom Competition finalist. Her work has appeared in books and anthologies, the Saturday Evening Post, etc. She’s a mother of a son, widow, and daughter of professional writers. A third generation native New Yorker, she is a Manhattan-based freelance essayist of literary nonfiction, and a poet. One of her most current essays can be found in the book, How to Write a Mystery, edited by Lee Child. (Scribner/Simon & Schuster).She has completed a book of literary nonfiction shorts called, Holding on to Right Side-Up and currently is working on a mystery novel
See her work at: www.patgallant.com
2023-2024 POETRY COLLECTION
Winner:
Every Marred Thing: A Time in America by Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago, IL
Comments by Poet and Co-Founder, New Orleans Writers Workshop, Category Judge, Jessica Kennison:
“It is landfill time/ will you lay with me?” asks the speaker in Every Marred Thing: A Time in America. From there, the poems take you on a contemporary American journey, at times reminiscent of the sweeping self-revelation, music, and open-ended landscapes of Walt Whitman and in other moments calling on the grit and dissonance of the Beats and free form jazz. These poems don’t shy away from what hurts and what’s ugly about being in this country – now. With images as simple and true as holding someone’s face through the phone to shockingly visceral as “squirrel carcass flat as a poem for reading,” the poems in this collection balance grief and loss with soaring descriptions creating a delightful romp through trash and capitalism and race politics and ways of seeing others and one’s self in the context of an unstable world. I will gladly lay in this landfill and, of course, as an American, I already do. The final poem prescribes:
“If you follow my instructions, you can read the desert: Don’t blink.”
Patrick T. Reardon, who was a Chicago Tribune reporter for 32 years, has published six poetry collections, including Darkness on the Face of the Deep and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. Nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, Reardon has had poetry published by America, Commonweal, Rhino, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry East, Under a Warm Green Linden and other journals. His history book The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago was published in 2020 by Southern Illinois University Press.
Runner-up
The Four Faces of Eve by Petra Perkins, Highlands Ranch, CO; Constance E. Boyle, Gail Waldstein, and Brooke Granville, all of Denver, CO
Judge’s Comments:
The Four Faces of Eve is an ambitious project in four parts by four poets that moves through the experiences of speakers who identify as women in relationships with partners, family, and their own belief systems. These poems vary widely in terms of form and content but what shines through is the feeling of a legacy of survival that starts with these women and runs off the page to millions of women before now and millions to come. From the sensory details of their environments “if it is really cold/ smells of coffee blow in” to desire “our skin grows/ eyes” to death and grief “not the sympathetic oh…./ the oh no,” this collection feels like a mirror shattered on the pavement, reflecting memories and eyes and hands and bellies and toes of different types of women facing myriad violence and myriad joy and continuing to catch the light.
2023-24 INDIVIDUAL POEM
Winner:
My Mother Stands on Her Feet for the Last Time, Janet Ford, Taylorsville, NC
The Judge’s Comments:
Skillful in its versification and delicate and subtle in its imagery the poem finds affinities between a dying mother’s last appearances and the atmospheric conditions. The poem opens with” when a ghost steams from the roof across the way” and already we feel a mastery of plain diction, well-observed imagery and the felt connection between what the poet sees in the world and in their heart. Moving throughout and the final rhyme seals the deal with emotional restraint.
Janet Ford lives in the Brushy Mountains of western North Carolina. The recipient of the 2017 Guy Owen Prize from Southern Poetry Review, her work has appeared in North Carolina Literary Review Online, Poetry East, and Clockhouse among other publications; she received a 2024 mentorship from the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Writers Series.
Runners-up
The Gate, Maureen Alsop, New Orleans, La
The Judge’s Comments:
There is a very strong sense of destination in this poem.
Maureen Alsop, Ph.D. is the author of Arbor Vitae; Tender to Empress; Pyre; Later, Knives & Trees; Mirror Inside Coffin; Mantic; Apparition Wren (also a Spanish Edition, Reyezuelo Aparición, translated by Mario Domínguez Parra); and several chapbooks including Sweetwater Ardour; Nightingale Habit; and the dream and the dream you spoke.She is the winner of the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award through the Hawaii Council for the Humanities, Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Prize for Poetry, The Bitter Oleander’s Frances Locke Memorial Poetry Award, among others. Her poetry was shortlisted for Montreal International Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize on numerous occasions.Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Laurel Review, AGNI, Blackbird, Tampa Review, DIAGRAM, Action Yes, Drunken Boat, Memorious, The Kenyon Review, Typo Magazine and featured on Verse Daily.
Naked Mermaid Talks to God, Rory O’Neill Schmitt, Scottsdale, AZ
The Judge’s Comments:
A parable of self-presentation and self-acceptance as a mermaid becomes human. The poet asks What effects do I really have on people—if they were to be honest?
Rory O’Neill Schmitt, Ph.D. is an author with four nonfiction books published by Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, including Navajo and Hopi Art in Arizona (2016), as well as New Orleans Voodoo (2018), Edgar Degas in New Orleans (2023), and Kate Chopin in New Orleans (2024), the latter co-written with Rosary O’Neill, Ph.D. Rory is a filmmaker. She was Executive Producer of The Long Long Night, starring Mark Duplass and Barret O’Brien, which premiered at Tribeca Festival (2023) and SXSW (2024). She also produced the award-winning short film, Garden District. Rory leads faculty development at the University of Southern California.
2023-2024 HIGH SCHOOL SHORT STORY
Winner
Eidelweiss by Yanxi He of Guangzhou, China
Comments by Judge of the High School Story Category, who wishes
to remain anonymous:
The author of this story, Eidelweiss, shows a level of storytelling talent and a level of sophistication not usually anticipated when reading work by high school students. We will expect to see great things from this young writer.
Note from Competition:
This story was accidentally entered not only in the high school category but also in the adult short story completion and it placed there as a finalist. Here is the bio Yanxi composed for himself.
I am Yanxi He from China and have been passionate about reading novels since childhood. This love for stories led me to start writing my own works when I was in the 8th grade. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed exploring different genres and styles, finding my voice as a writer. Writing allows me to express my thoughts and creativity. I see it as a way to connect with others through shared experiences and emotions. I am always eager to improve and learn from every opportunity, and I look forward to further developing my skills through this activity.
The Hartwig Moss Insurance Agency
The Hartwig Moss Insurance Agency is Proud |
To once again Support The:
William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition
And its Prize for Best Story by a High School Student
For the 2023-2024 year, the Prize Winner is:
YanXi He, a student in Guangzhou, China
This Prize is awarded annually in memory of the creation of
This competition category and prize in 1993 by:
Hartwig Moss, III, and Nancy Moss
2024 Faulkner – Wisdom Competition
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
—William Faulkner
Others Who Placed
Book of Fiction
Short List:
A Singular Note, Rachel Gottlieb, Evanston, IL
Dark Reactions, Peter Neofotis, New York, NY
Escaped Lunatics Among Us: Stories of the Lone Star State,
Richard Jespers, Lubbock, TX
For the Realm, Dakota Collins, Nashville, TN
Lessons in Advanced Mathematics, Thomas Sabino, Savannah, GA
Potomac, Barnes Carr, Houston, TX
Stories of Us, David Martin Anderson, Boerne, TX
Talking in Layers, S. A. Slosberg, New Rochelle, NY
Thanatology, Jonathan Hale Rosen, Burlington, CT
The Mardi Gras Boys. Roland Rusich, Mandeville, LA
The Night Doctor of Richmond, Tony Gentry, North Chesterfield, VA
The Petrova Project, Brenda Horrigan, Vineyard Haven, MA
The Price of Land, Benjamin Morrison, New Orleans, LA
Other Finalists
A New Flame, David Brennan, New York, NY
Coming of Age, Carolyn McGrath, Charlottesville, VA
Cozy Grim, Stan Kempton, New Orleans, LA
Destinations, Dylan Fisher, Avondale Estates, GA
Eats, Audre Verite, Iowa City, IA
Getting It Wrong, Justin Swingle, West Hollywood, CA
Islay’s Tale, Ellen Breck Coggeshall, Barnstable, Cape Cod, MA
Markers, Mary Hutchins Reed, Walworth, WI
Moth Orchid, Linda Gorelova, Columbus, OH
Neighbors, Rodney Neslestuen, Woodbury, MN
Mister Inside Washington, Benjamin Duffy, PSC 2, Box 8146, APO, AE 09012
Notes for Making the Film, A Warrior’s Mercy, Jay Korn, San Rafael, CA
One Day Among the Ruins, Robert Raymer, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Parallax, Stella Joyce Krall, Madison, WI
Prosperity Key, Bob Bachner, New York, NY
Renate O’Malley’s Many Misfortunes, Caroline Shepard, Brooklyn, NY
Shouting Won’t Help, Denise Bogard, Clayton, MO
Show World/The Chaotic Novel, Benjamin Shepard, Brooklyn, NY
Smell the Bright Cold, Robert Wallace, Durham, NC
Stories of Us, David Martin Anderson, Boerne, TX
The Big Disconnect, Virginia Ewing Hudson, Medanales, NM
The Falling, C. A. Willis, Burien, WA
The Irksome O’Donovans, Michael Langley, Chicago, IL
The Karmic Caseworker, Cassandra Delaney, New Orleans, LA
The Only Way to Cheat a Hangman, Leah Angstman, Boulder, CO
The Real Pakistani Housewives of New Orleans, Aneela Shuja, Kenner, LA
There Is and There Isn’t, Dara Passana, Geneva, Switzerland
Walking Around Lucky, John Everett, Phoenix, MD
Semi-finalists
Absolutely Stupid, Murdic Jones, Monks Corner, SC
All the Darkness Holds, John Lang, Malibu, CA
Blight to Bloom, Robert Brown Butler, Mahopac, NY
Born Gifted, Martha Donegan, Metairie, LA
Borrowed Dreams, Justin Swingle, West Hollywood, CA
Call of the Redbird, Ann Howell, Asheville, NC
Charity Starts at Home, Dev Jannerson, Tucson, AZ
CIA 6th Grade, Taylor Lucio, Northglen, CO
Come Again Shiloh, Kenneth D. Cole, Berlin, CT
Cream City, Mark Connelly, Milwaukee, WI
Dangerdudes, Mark Mitchell, Greenville, SC
Darlings of Paradise, Eileen Cronin, Sherman Oaks, CA
Delta Main, Greg Jones, Orinda, CA
Fallen Apple, Mark Connelly, Milwaukee, WI
Forewarned, Tracey Phillips, Verona, WI
For Richer or Poorer, Janet Taylor-Perry, Ridgeland, MS
Formula, David Barry, San Francisco, CA
Holding on to Right Side Up, Pat Gallant Welch, New York, NY
Honey, Randall Silvis, Mercer, PA
Islay’s Tale, Ellen Brent Coggeshall, Barnstable, MA
Her Own War, Debra Borchert, Bellevue, WA
Hurricane, Randall Silvis, Mercer, PA
Lonnie’s Wall, Steve Kash, Terre Haute, IN
Moon People, Danielle Barr, Woodlawn, VA
My French Summer, Todd Arkenberg, Arlington Heights, IL
Newman’s Choice, Mark Connelly, Milwaukee, WI
Nescopeck Creek, George Kaufman, Durham, NC
Notes from the Netherworld, Alan Goodman, Melbourne, FL
Rain Falls on What is Lost, William West, Cochecton, NY
Recapturing Lisdoonvarna, Frank S. Johnson,
Rocking Chair, Nancy Brock, Columbia, SC
Shellback, Karen Foresti Hempson, Skaneateles, NY
Singing Bird, Siobhan Sullivan, Niwot, CO
Spitting on Hegel, Carolyn Breedlove, Nachidoches, LA
The Agnostic Sublime, Sean Hooks, Arlington, TX
The American Plan, Dawn Corrigan, Pensacola, FL
The Gem of Egypt, M. J. Paramik, San Francisco, CA
The Girl Who Knew, Curt Kinghoffer, Pooler, GA
The Devil Drinks Monsoons, Susan Sparrow, New Orleans, LA
The Long Thirst, C. A. Willis, Burien, WA
The Lovers of Cardoba, Elizabeth Wellington, Wellesley, MA
The Mistaken Life of Nadine G, Liz Essie Kahrs, Scituate, MA
The Shadows of Clayton, Afan Bapacker, Dearborn, MI
The Woman Who Talked After Death, Nancy Dafoe, Homer, NY
Walking on Thunder, Larkin Edwin Greer, New York, NY
Why Belize, Rodney Neslestuen, Woodbury, MN
Non-Fiction Book
Short List
Daylight Loses to another Evening
I Saved Lives
Mugging Rosa Parks
Outer, Inner, Secret
Scattered
Other Finalists
Irritability, Marilyn Moriarty, Roanoke, VA
Songs of My Fathers, Garner Landry, Houston, TX
Forever Bob, Letters from the Korean War, Gail Strickland, Fairfield, CA
Living: Inspiration from a Father with Cancer, Jeffrey Stewart, Cary, NC
No Semi-Finalists were selected
Novella
Short List
Cadildo by Jean-Marc Duplantier of New Orleans, LA
Calumnia by David Kennedy of Bronx, NY
Resistance by Amina Gautier of Chicago, IL
The Caretaker by Matthew Dufus, Shelby, NC
The Chant of Bees by Tricia Warren of Atlanta, GA
The Clearing by Alexander Shalom Joseph of Black Hawk, CO
The Tropical Affair by Rosary O’Neill of New Orleans, LA
Other Finalists
Fern Spike, Ken Sparrow, Haverhill, MA
Five Interviews by David Martin Anderson, Boerne, TX
Genetic Goulash, Bob Berger, Cutler Bay, FL
Once Home, Caleb Dean, Medford, MA
Pursuit, Tim Weed, Putney, VT
The Nandy Chronicles, Perry Glasser, Haverhill, MA
The Tragedy of Brahmalear, E. L. Negro (Author has not provide any contact Info.)
No Semi-Finalists Were Selected
Short Story
Short List
Again Together, Circa 1802, Frank Johnson, Greenfield, MO
Compassion, David Martin Anderson, Boerne, TX
First Year Experience, Amina Lolita Gautier, Chicago, IL
Nine Lives, Tiara Smith, Silver Spring, MD
The Death Party, Dev Jannerson, Tucson, AZ
The Great Quintana, S. A. Slosberg, New Rochelle, NY
Whistling Thorns, David Brennan, New York, NY
Other Finalists
Death of a Poet, Elizabeth Wellington, Wellesley, MA
I Wish I Could Ask You Now, S. A. Slosberg, New Rochelle, NY
Leviathan, Ellen Breck Coggeshall, Barnstable, Cape Cod, MA
Living Creatures, Patricia Grace King, Durham, England, UK
Palace, Andy Plattner, Atlanta, GA
Radio Men, David Brennan, New York, NY
Shirts and Skins, David Martin Anderson, Boerne, TX
Who Am I Now? Bob Bachner, New York, NY
Semi-Finalists
Eidelweiss, Yanxi He, Guangzhou, China
Erosion, David Martin Anderson, Boerne, TX
Guest Book, David Brennan, New York, NY
Ted’s Sacred Flower, Karen Foresti Hempson, Skaneateles, NY
The Hollowed Place That Is the Heart of My Heart, Jarrett Kaufman, Dumas, TX
The Restoration, James Sisk, Traverse City, MI
Books-in-Progress (Fiction and Non-Fiction)
Short List
A Man’s Game, Ronald Coleman, New Orleans, LA
Cracks in the Divine, Jean Dowdy, St. Augustine, FL
Down Below, Michael Hendrychs, Chicago, IL
Have You Ever Been to the Badlands, Bram Kincheloe, High Falls, NY
Other Finalists
Bequeathal, Martha Donegan, Metairie, LA
Nights I Lie Awake, Divya Sood, Edison, NY
The Barcelona Brothers, Jean-Marc Duplantier, New Orleans, LA
The Blue Guitar, David Alan Pelzer, Highland Park, IL
The Problem of Impossible Things, Lita Kurth, San Jose, CA
Scorpion Box, Maureen Alsop, New Orleans, LA|
The Witch of Sonora, Johnnie Bernhard, Fulton, TX
Vestiges of Defection, Kiara Saxena, Long Island City, NY
Semi-Finalists
500 Nights, Kenneth Cole, Berlin, CT
Death and Fun and Petty Theft, Alexander Joseph, Black Hawk, CO
House of Chosen Women, Berkeley, CA
Light of the Third Day, Denise Heinze, Durham, NC
Lives of the Aints, Brooke Champagne, Northport, AL
Last Fog Runner, Karen Kersting, New Orleans, LA
The Pursuit, Tim Weed, Putney, VT
Light of the Third Day, Denize Heinze, Durham, NC
Marcelle Bienvenu, Elizabeth Williams, New Orleans, LA
Tear Here, Matthew Pitt, Fort Worth, TX
The Darkest Skies, Caleb Dean, Medford, MA
Essay
Short List
Built to Last, Bram Kincheloe of New York, NY
Highways, Thuy Bui, Baton Rouge, LA
Houston: We have a megalomaniac!, Gardner Landry, Houston, TX
Lion Cage, Elizabeth Wellington, Wellesley, MA
Makeover, Julie Klein, Des Moines, IA
My Ex-Husband’s New Wife’s Hair, Adriana Paramo, Virginia Beach, VA
Place Home, Julie McSherry, Greeley, CO
War Effort, Lottie Brent Boggan, Jackson, MS
Other Finalists
Fascination, Garry Wallace, Powell, WY
Me Without You, Patricia Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Semi-Finalists
Den, Garry Wallace, Powell, WY
From the Belly of the Armadillo, Lottie Brent Bogan, Jackson, MS
Possessed, Gary Wallace, Powell, WY
Last Night, Patricia Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Pillow Talk, Patricia Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Poetry Collection
Short List
Dream Ceremony, Alabama Porch, Margaret Guilbert, New York, NY
Samsara, Christine Poythress, Madison, TN
Sun Standing Still, Veronica Sanitate, Ann Arbor, MI
No other finalists or semifinalists were selected
Individual Poem
Short List
At the Kitchen Sink, Maureen Welch, St. Augustine, FL
Aurora, Gail Waldstein, Denver, CO
Deciding Point: New York City Subway 2024, Pat Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Dog Days, Randall Silvas, Mercer, PA
Her Fairy Tale Life, Tina D. C. Hayes, Dixon, KY
Neige à Vieux Carre, Jack Stillwagon, Hamilton, NY
Finalists
An Ode to Grant’s Tomb, Margaret Guilbert, New York, NY
Glances Versus Stares, Yoruba Baltrip-Coleman, New Orleans, LA
Hurricane, Thuy Bui, Baton Rouge, LA
Snapshot of My In-Laws, Tina D. C. Hayes, Dixon, KY
Spirals, Tina D. C. Hayes, Dixon, KY
State of Repair, Yoruba Baltrip-Coleman, New Orleans, LA
Semi-Finalists
A Tree Fell, Pat Gallant Gail, New York, NY
Bride and King, Janet Taylor-Perry, Ridgeland, MS
I’ll Take Vanilla, Pat Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Second Grade Outing in Central Park, Pat Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Stepdaughter Dance, Pat Gallant Weich, New York, NY
Dog Days, Randall Silvas, Mercer, PA
Her Fairy Tale Life, Tina D. C. Hayes, Dixon, KY
Neige à Vieux Carre, Jack Stillwagon, Hamilton, NY
Short Story by a High School Student
Short List
Marking Time, Jamie Ann Howell, Cedar Rapids, IA
No Time to Lose, Margarita Hernandez, Houston, TX
The Orange Monster, Garland McDuff, Mesa, AZ
Falling off the Edge, Wesley Terrence, San Francisco, CA
No Other Entries were selected to Place.