2020 Writing Award Short List

Congratulations to our 2020 Writing Award Shortlist! Please join us in congratulating them and wishing them well in their writing journey. You can leave comments at the bottom of any shortlist finalist profile.

A head and shoulders picture of a smiling young woman in a jean jacket with short, curly brown hair, green eyes and glasses.

I am a long-time writer and yet-to-be author and I spend more of my time time thinking about fictional worlds than real ones. I've been telling stories since I learned to talk, writing since I could

LaraB Photo

I am a part-time marketing manager, with a PhD in 20th-century literature and a life-long passion for medieval history. Years ago I won a national short story competition, but motherhood and work took

William Kaufmann, award-winning ceramic artist and award winning writer

I live in rural Wisconsin and work full time as an artist-potter. In collaboration with my wife, Cynthia, we are multiple award-winning ceramic artists. 

I am a writer. My 11th grade English

Elizabeth Goodhue

Elizabeth Goodhue is a freelance writer and blogger. When challenging a student to publish her work on a blog, Elizabeth also started one called ecgpoetry.blogspot.com. Since then she has written a

Picture of author Mark Stibbe

Mark Stibbe is a full-time published author and the founder of BookLab, a company dedicated to helping emerging writers. Mark was adopted in 1960, along with his twin sister Claire. In the 1940s

Dan Brockington

I am an anthropologist who has lived and worked in Tanzania for several years since the mid-1990s conducting long-term fieldwork in remote rural areas. The worlds I describe in The Grymcat Conspiracy

At home on the Manx coast

Joanne Clague is an NCTJ-qualified journalist who has worked for thirty years in print, radio and broadcast media in the Isle of Man, a Crown dependency in the middle of the Irish Sea famous for its

Michael Salort

Michael Salort has been a TV reporter, TV producer, investigative producer for national newsmagazine programs, screenwriter, business writer, and novelist. 

In novel writing, Michael Salort is the

Jennifer James, MFT

About the Author 

I loved books even before I could read, and I memorized such picture books as Madeline’s Rescue by Ludwig Bemelmans so that I could recite them to my mother saying, “Look, Mom!

Alex Tremari

Alex Tremari is a Pacific Northwest transplant who took way to long to make her 6th grade declaration, "When I grow up I'm going to be a writer" a reality. Her unpublished novel, Dragoncast, placed

Geoff Keall is the author of SOIMATHAT - A Losers Guide to the Galaxy. SOIAMTHAT is a accronym for the full title The Semantics of i AM.

I live in Hervey Bay, a beautiful, quiet seaside city in southeast Queensland. My family escaped here from Palmerston North, New Zealand, after experiencing a family tragedy. We'd never been to