Fairhope 2014 Nonfiction Prize


Undergraduate Winner: "Dance Dares and Secret Affairs" by Ashley Reynolds, St. Leo University

Ashley is a double major in Global Studies and English with a specialization in Professional Writing. She has finished her first novel and is currently working on her second. She also is undergraduate winner of the 2013 GCACWT Fairhope Poetry Prize. Ashley plans to pursue a career in international diplomacy, and hopes to become a published author. 

GCACWT Nonfiction Michael Garriga's commentary:

Playful, witty, and serious at the same time, this essay focuses on two outcasts who come together through their adoration of the written word. One outcast has the usual problems of a teenager; the other is dealing with way heavier issues, things grownups shy away from.  Yet writing just might salvage both of their lives.

Graduate Winner: "Mouths, Tear Ducts, and Bullet Holes" by Whitney Templeton, University of South Florida

Whitney Templeton is completing the final semester of her MFA at University of South Florida and plans to graduate in May. Her poems have appeared in Barnstorm Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, and Moonshot Magazine among others. Whitney teaches English Composition Online at USF and serves as a reader for Sweet: A Literary Confection. 

GCACWT Nonfiction Judge Michael Garriga's commentary:

This essay is about a crime so vile my stomach turned--yet because it is written in a poetic voice, both shocking and nuanced; in a voice groping for understanding, for facts, and for the reasons why authority figures would rather have us question our own sanity rather than hunt the banal evil that exists around us; in a voice searching for the meaning of something as small and utterly large as "holes;"I couldn't stop reading.  And I'm still reading it in my memory now.