New York, NY—June 28, 2021—Poets & Writers announced today that the winners of the 2021 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award are Courtney Denelle for fiction and Jodie Noel Vinson for poetry. The prestigious award, which is generously supported by Maureen Mahon Egen, a member of Poets & Writers’ Board of Directors, aims to provide promising writers a network for professional advancement.
Each year, Poets & Writers selects one state (or Washington, D.C.), and invites writers from that jurisdiction to apply for the Writers Exchange Award. For 2021, the state of Rhode Island was chosen. Applications from Rhode Islander writers were reviewed by poetry judge Prageeta Sharma and fiction judge Madeleine Thien. Excerpts from the winning manuscripts can be found here.
are the winners of the 2021 Writers Exchange Award.
(Credits: Keith Barraclough, Matt Ferrara)
The Writers Exchange Award offers the winners an unusual opportunity to meet with leading literary professionals. In November, Denelle and Vinson will meet with agents, editors, authors, and others. The winners will establish new professional contacts and gain insight and advice—about writing, publishing, and marketing. In addition, they will each receive a $500 honorarium, present a reading for the public, hosted by Poets & Writers, and be invited to participate in a one-month residency at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming.
In the past, as a direct result of winning the Writers Exchange Award, writers have had their books published, received fellowships, secured teaching positions, and laid the groundwork for their professional lives as writers. The award has helped to launch the careers of Sue Monk Kidd (The Invention of Wings, The Secret Life of Bees) and Lidia Yuknavitch (The Book of Joan), among others. To date, one-hundred-and-eight writers from forty-two states and the District of Columbia have participated. A complete list of past winners can be found here.
Courtney Denelle’s debut novel, It’s Not Nothing, will be published by the Santa Fe Writers Project in Fall 2022. Her short stories have appeared in the Alembic, Tahoma Literary Review, the Southampton Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded a residency from Hedgebrook, and received her greater education from the public library. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Jodie Noel Vinson is a poet and nonfiction writer whose creative work often blends the two genres. Her prose poetry has been published in Kyoto Journal, SAND, Boulevard, and AGNI, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Nowhere Magazine, and Electric Literature, among other places. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Emerson College.
The judges also cited first runners-up Julie Danho (in poetry) and Jean M. Medeiros (in fiction), and second runners-up David O’Connell (in poetry) and Emory Harkins (in fiction).
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