In which I win a poetry contest...

Dear Competitors,Thank you for your fiction and poetry submissions to the 2010 Rannu Fund. We have finally found our winners and honourable mentions in both the fiction and poetry categories.

**Please note that all judging was done blind; names, bios, e-mails, etc. were stripped from all entries prior to judging.**

Fiction Winner:
"Foretold" by Barbara Gordon

Fiction Honourable Mentions:
"Little Escher" by Robert Borski
"A Swarm of Shadows" by Francine Lewis

Fiction Judges: Don Bassingthwaite, Nick Stokes, Sandra Kasturi

Poetry Winner:
"Barren - A Chronicle in Futility" by Steve Vernon

Poetry Honourable Mentions:
"A Good Catch" by Colleen Anderson
"Manifesting Universes" by Francine Lewis

Poetry Judges: Gemma Files, Helen Marshall, Sandra Kasturi

We would also like to note the entries that made it onto one or more judges' shortlists:

Fiction:
"Freedom's Just Another Word" by Colleen Anderson
"Water of Life" by F.J. Bergmann
"Bat Story" by Michael Colangelo
"Book of Kishon" by Ivan Faute
"Gentle Awakening" by Maybelle Leung
"The Official" by Eric Sandler
"Simulove Industries, Model #69" by Myna Wallin

Poetry:
"Nephology" by F.J. Bergmann
"Overtures" by F.J. Bergmann
"Polterguest" by Robert Borski
"Yeti-Nessie: A Cryptid Love Story" by Robert Borski
"Persephone Depressed" by Adrienne J. Odasso
"For the Reverend Adelir Anton de Carli" by Matt Schumacher
"From a Little-Known Collection Entitled 'Legends of Spiders & Water'" by Matt Schumacher

Thank you all for participating in this competition, and I hope you will all enter again next year--check the website for details in the fall.

PLEASE NOTE that for next year's competition, the Rannu Fund Awards will be sponsored in part by ChiZine Publications.

And thank you for your patience as the judges got through the entries. (And thanks again to the judges!!)

Congratulations, all.

Sandra Kasturi

Winning first place in the poetry section was both a thrill and an honour and the prize money will definitely pay a few bills.

The poem is an epic recounting of the 1820 presidentially-commissioned hunt for the Jersey Devil.

An excerpt from the five page poem will be posted on the Rannu website.

In the fall the entire poem will appear, online, in the pages of Chi-Zine.

Yours in storytelling,


Steve Vernon