Chapbook Competition winner.

The SLCC Student Publication Center and the English Department announce the winner of the First Annual SLCC Chapbook Competition, Sabriel Harris, for her work God’s Country.

Dr. Steve Tuttle (Brigham Young University) judged the competition, and had this to say about Ms. Harris’s manuscript:

I was immediately hooked by the language and loved how the story moved away from its stable and familiar starting point.  The frustration and angst in the first pages quickly dissipates in favor of a much larger, almost existential set of questions.  Watching the narrator move away from her familiar (but uncomfortable) life and into the foreignness of Jerusalem is fascinating.  But what’s most fascinating is that she doesn’t focus on Jerusalem (this is no travelogue) but on her continued unease in the face of unanswerable questions about God and the body and everything she knows.  I was convinced by descriptions of place but more so by descriptions of feeling (“I need to feel what it is like to pray to an ancient God and have faith in an answer”).  The story is bursting with good lines like that.  The story makes use of wonderful imagery and a vivid sense of place.  Its focus on the sea and the body made me feel many miles removed from anything I know.

Elizabeth Allen’s manuscript Puncture Wounds was awarded 2nd place. Two honorable mentions were also awarded, for Jason McFarland’s How I Left My Heart in Chicago Next to the Decaying Corpse of Judy Garland and Sandra Rytting’s Linder Quest.

The SLCC Student Publication Center and the English Department deeply appreciates the work of all the writers who entered the competition. We received many excellent manuscripts, all of which we read with attention.

God’s Country will be published in a run of 250 copies, and will be available in mid-April. Please look for further information about events related to the publication.