The National Poetry Series has announced the 2011 winners of its Open Competition, the annual contest for books by poets at any stage in their career. The five writers, representing both coasts and three Midwestern states, will receive one thousand dollars each and publication of their manuscripts by participating publishers.

This year Penguin Books judge Lucie Brock-Broido chose With Venom and Wonder by Julianne Buchsbaum of Lawrence, Kansas. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop who is currently a university librarian, Buchsbaum is also the author of A Little Night Comes (Del Sol Press, 2005) and Slowly, Slowly, Horses (Ausable Press, 2001).

Bernadette Mayer selected Chicago poet Hannah Gamble's debut, Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast, for publication by Fence Books. Gamble's poems have appeared previously in journals such as Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, and Ecotone, which originally published the title poem from her forthcoming book (reprinted on the web forum As it Ought to Be).

For Coffee House Press, Ange Mlinko selected Green Is for World by Juliana Leslie of Santa Cruz, California. Leslie is also the author of More Radiant Signals, published in 2010 by Letter Machine Editions.

Patricia Smith chose New York City poet (and translator) Idra Novey's second collection, Exit Civilian, for publication by University of Georgia Press. Novey's first book is In the Next Country, which won the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books in 2007. Her translations from the Spanish and Potuguese include On Elegance While Sleeping by Viscount Lascano Tegui (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010), Birds for a Demolition by Manoel de Barros (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010), and The Clean Shirt of It by Paulo Henriques Britto (BOA Editions, 2007).

D. A. Powell selected Marcus Wicker's first book, Maybe the Saddest Thing, for publication by HarperCollins. The Ann Arbor, Michigan, poet, a Cave Canem fellow who was recently a resident poet at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, has published work in DIAGRAM, jubilat, and Ninth Letter, among other journals.

The five winning books will be released by their respective publishers next summer. The deadline for next year's prize will be announced later this year.

In the video below, Wicker reads poems, including one from a series of love letters to his "secret heroes," at Cave Canem's annual retreat for fellows.

The sixth annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize, recognizing "the power of the written word to promote peace," was awarded yesterday to novelist Chang-Rae Lee and journalist-cum-memoirist Wilbert Rideau. Lee received the ten-thousand-dollar award for his fourth novel, The Surrendered (Riverhead Books), and Rideau won for his memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (Knopf).

Lee's novel unfolds during the Korean War, examining the repercussions of violence in the decades that follow the event. "This is a big novel which steadily transcends any thematic constraints and steps into real art," says fiction judge Ron Carlson, adding, "the dimensions of the book insist on a gritty and complex understanding of our best impulses in the worst of times."

Nonfiction judge Eric Bates says of Rideau's book, completed after the author spent forty-four years incarcerated in Louisiana prisons, "For his reporting alone, Rideau has made a critical and lasting contribution to our understanding of a prison system that long ago gave up on the notion of rehabilitation. But his memoir goes far beyond the limitations of journalism. He brings to his story a deep devotion to the power of literature, drawing on traditions as diverse as Saint Augustine and Frederick Douglass to craft a dramatic and moving tale that is both deeply felt and richly observed."

The winners will be presented their awards at a ceremony on November 13 in Dayton, Ohio, the seat of the historic Dayton Peace Accords, initialed there in November 1995.

In the video below, Lee discusses his winning book with Leonard Lopate of New York City public radio station WNYC.

Writer Patricia Roth Schwartz blogs about facilitating a memoir writing workshop series in historic Seneca Falls, New York.

It’s a beautiful spring day in historic Seneca Falls. We meet in the town Recreation Center, a low brick building on the canal, which connects to the Erie, where lazy houseboats drift by on the gentle green waters dotted with ducks and waterfowl. The room we have has one enormous windowed wall. Four participants, two middle-aged and two seniors, regulars at most of the literary programs held locally, have gathered.

We plunge into our topic: "Telling the Stories of our Lives: Writing the Personal Memoir." After some discussion, we start an exercise. Following the guided visualization, everyone is asked to write from a childhood memory. As we’re beginning, a woman and her twelve-year-old daughter join us, apologizing for their lateness. I initiate introductions, settle the latecomers into chairs, bring them briefly up to speed, then encourage them both to start writing. The mother goes ahead, but the girl just sits, looking scared and confused. We’d advertised the workshop to all ages, but she's the only youngster. Her mother said she loves to write, but right now I know exactly how she’s feeling, afraid of embarrassing herself, of doing it "wrong."

My background as a psychotherapist jumps into play. "I'll help you," I say, and hunker down beside her. "Who were you thinking of?" "My granddad," she whispers. "Okay—great. Can you write him a letter, telling him what you remember?" She thinks about it. "Yes!" Her pen leaps to the page. "Good—good—keep going," I say. "Put in a lot of details, like you were looking at it in a movie."

Before we knew it, everyone, including the girl, has completed a piece. One by one the writers read aloud. When it's her turn, the girl is pleased with and excited by her letter. She shares it willingly, how her granddad would hoist her up on his shoulders when she was really little and carry her around. The group loves it and tells her as much.

"Okay," I finish. "Now when you go home, write it up really nicely and mail it to him!" The young girl beams.

Photo: Patricia Roth Schwartz. Credit: Sandy Zohari.

Support for the Reading/Workshops in New York is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with additional support from the Friends of Poets & Writers.