Five Make the Shortlist for our September 2019 Writing Contest
We are so pleased to announce that five writers have made the shortlist for our September 2019 Write Prompt Challenge.
We try to choose images that can take authors in countless directions, and that's exactly what the image of a cabin in the snow did. These writers approached the provided image with wonderfully unique views that were clever and surprising.
Congratulations to Kimberlee Ashby, Ace Baker, Robert Chursinoff, Rachel Freeman, and Cheryl Skory Suma — we wish you well as you go on to the final stage of judging!
KIMBERLEE ASHBY | shortlisted for her story, 'The Empty Page'
Kimberlee Ashby lives in Calgary, Alberta with her husband and daughter. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at York University in Toronto. She likes spending her free time reading, writing, playing tennis, and exploring Alberta’s Rockies.
ACE BAKER | shortlisted for his story, 'Plow Breaks Soil'
Ace Baker is a writer, poet, and writing coach from Vancouver, Canada. His short story, "Victory Girl," won the Storyteller Award, and his poetry has won the SIWC, PNWA, and Magpie awards, among others. Both is prose and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and National Magazine Awards.
ROBERT CHURSINOFF | shortlisted for his story, 'Unseasonable'
During daylight hours Robert works as a digital media producer, director and editor. After sundown the pen and paper come out. His writing has appeared in Vice, Nowhere, Matador, and Hobo magazines. He lives in Vancouver where he's just finished his first screenplay and is working on his debut novel.
RACHEL FREEMAN | shortlisted for her story, 'Fading Winter'
Rachel Freeman lives in Kitchener, Ontario with her incredible husband, two fantastic children, and a pair of strangely friendly cats. She is an aspiring author, avid reader, and occasional poet. Creativity is a part of her every day and if music is playing, Rachel is singing along.
CHERYL SKORY SUMA | shortlisted for her story, 'Back to the Start'
Cheryl Skory Suma holds an Honours degree in Psychology and a M.Sc. in Speech-Language Pathology. She launched her writing career with a YA fantasy novel, Habitan, and this January released her second novel, gods Playground. She recently began submitting her work to literary journals, and in 2019 she has placed as: a semifinalist in Ruminate Magazine’s annual VanderMey Nonfiction Prize, made the longlist of the annual Erbacce Prize for poetry, was a finalist in Public Poetry’s Enough Anthology poetry contest (pub Nov 2019), was shortlisted for Blank Spaces Flash Fiction contest, and this August her novel, Habitan, made the Longlist of Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards.
These five entries will be sent out to our panel of judges who rate each story based on its own merit. [See a breakdown of what the judges look for here.] Winners will be announced at the beginning of May - with first place being published in the June 2020 issue of Blank Spaces.
