WC&C Scholarship Competition

Writers' Conferences & Centers- WC&C
Scholarship Competition

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Writers’ Conferences & Centers is conducting its annual competition to provide scholarships for emerging writers who wish to attend a writers’ conference, center, retreat, festival, or residency. The scholarships will be applied to fees to attend any of the members of WC&C, an association of outstanding conferences, colonies, and festivals for writers.

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The competition is open to all writers who would like to attend a WC&C member program. To enter the competition, please follow the guidelines below. Two scholarships of $500 will be awarded.

2012 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Keith Leonard

Keith Leonard is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Indiana University. In the fall, he will be a Future Faculty Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at IUPUI. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2009, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, and other journals.

Of the winning submission, Mr. Henderson wrote—
It was a complete joy to read these poems. I was first caught by the lines “For once, the barnacles are what they seem: / a huddle of shocked mouths.” And then the poems, page by page, just kept getting richer and more haunting. The ocean imagery is especially memorable. I’ll be returning to these poems often, and I hope to find them in a book sometime soon.

Fiction- Justin Quarry

Justin Quarry’s short stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, New England Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Normal School. He is the winner of the Robert Olen Butler Short Fiction Prize as well as fellowships, scholarships, and grants from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Elizabeth George Foundation, andthe Kerouac Project of Orlando, among others. He lives in Nashville and teaches at Vanderbilt University.

Of the winning novel excerpt from
Ghost of the Country, Mr. Henderson wrote—
What a wonderful opening to a novel. The whole history of the continent opens up, the decimation and loss, the arrogance of explorers stretching back hundreds of years, the gorgeous remnants of a vast wilderness, the details of botany and magnificent birds, the unrelenting sadness of it all, and the colorful, complex characters who are all damaged and searching. Great voice, vision, and intelligence.

2012 Scholarship Finalists:

Poetry Finalists:

Christine Kitano
Kate Lindroos

Fiction Finalists:

Paula Whyman, “You May See a Stranger”
Marian Palaia, “Only Bluer and Bigger, With No Mountains”

2012 Judge:

William Haywood Henderson was born in Syracuse, New York, but quickly migrated west. He grew up mostly in Colorado, headed farther west for college, and earned a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley. He held a variety of jobs, including chef, copyeditor, technical writer, landscape gardener, and caretaker on a ranch in Wyoming, before heading back east to take a degree in creative writing at Brown University. He attended Stanford University from 1989 to 1991 as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing, and he used the time to finish his first novel (Native) and start his second novel (The Rest of the Earth). He has taught creative writing at Brown, Harvard, and the University of Colorado at Denver. Since 2002 he has taught novel writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. His third novel, Augusta Locke, was released by Viking in April 2006 and is available in paperback from Penguin.

Guidelines for Submissions:

Submissions in fiction and poetry will be considered. Separate submissions in each genre are permitted.
Writers’ names must not appear on submissions. A separate cover sheet must accompany submissions and include the following: Name, Address, phone number, email address, title, and genre. Please bind submissions by staple, binder clip, or paper clip. If you wish to be notified that your manuscript was received please include an SASE postcard.
All manuscripts must be single-sided and typed. Prose must be double-spaced. A maximum of one short story (or novel excerpt) up 25 pages or 10 pages of poetry will be considered. Each new poem must start a new page.
You may enter in more than one genre, and you may also enter multiple manuscripts in one genre, provided each manuscript is accompanied by its own entry fee.
Former or current students of the judge are ineligible. Previous recipients of WC&C Scholarships are also not eligible to submit.

Submissions must be postmarked between December 1st and March 30th of each year. Please address submissions to:

WC&C Scholarship Competition
Association of Writers & Writing Programs
MS1E3, George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

A $10 reading fee, either a check or money order in US dollars made payable to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, must accompany all submissions. Winners will be notified by May 15th. All submissions should be accompanied by a SASE for notification of winners.

Two winners will receive $500 scholarships to attend a WC&C member program; funds are paid directly to the program selected. (Member conferences reserve the right to determine participants in their programs; winners select a first choice and two alternates.) Winners and finalists also receive a one-year individual membership in AWP.

2010 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Dilruba Ahmed attended the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference & Bookfair.

Fiction- Chidelia Edochie.

2009 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Celeste Doaks.

Fiction- Kelly Luce attended the Sewanee Writers Conference.

2008 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Christina Lovin attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Fiction- Jeffrey Voccola attended the Prague Summer Program hosted by Western Michigan University.

2007 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Ching-In Chen attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop.

Fiction- Deirdra McAfee attended the Wesleyan Writers Conference.

2006 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman attended the Paris Writers' Workshop.

Fiction- Hosanna Patience attended the Tin House Writers' Conference.

2005 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- Jillian Weise attended the Sewanee Writers Conference.

Fiction- Morgan McDermott.

2004 Scholarship Winners:

Poetry- J.W. Richardson attended the Santa Fe Writers’ Conference.

Fiction- Heidi Durrow attended the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop.