June 22, 2009

Dear Fellow Writer:

The Native Writers' Circle of the Americas (NWCA) has been sponsoring a First Books Award competition ever since the first Returning the Gift festival was held at the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma, in July of 1992. This event marked the start of NWCA, as well as Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, both organizations dedicated to assisting and honoring Native writers throughout the hemisphere. Each year, awards of $500 are bestowed on winning poetry and prose manuscripts that are submitted during a judging period, usually from October to January of each year. Winning manuscripts are selected by a panel of judges from all the submissions that are sent to us. For the first six years, Joseph Bruchac and his Greenfield Review Press published all of the winning poetry manuscripts and even a couple of the prose ones. However, as all good things must eventually come to an end, Joe had to give up his activities with regard to the awards program, as well as the press itself having to cut back drastically on its normal yearly productions. I assumed the directorship of the First Books competition in 1998, in addition to my duties as the project director of NWCA, and the program has thus continued. Although I am not a publisher, I have, on occasion, been successful in assisting in the publication of some of our prize-winning manuscripts since 1998, occasionally with university and small presses.

(The web page Native Storytellers Online, maintained by Wordcraft Circle member and mentor Karen Strom, contains a complete list of all the winners of the First Books Awards competition, in both poetry and prose, with highlighted scoring under the titles that have been published since their winning the award. A quick count of the titles, made just this morning, reveals that of the eighteen winning poetry manuscripts selected all throughout the history of NWCA, twelve have been published as books, with two more pending publication, and of the seventeen award-winning prose titles, eight have been published, with three more pending publication. Additionally, NWCA sponsors an annual award for established writers, the Lifetime Achievement Award, voted on each year by writers who mail in their personal votes after ballots have been sent to them by NWCA. (Incidentally, if you have never voted in the annual Lifetime Achievement balloting, and would like to do so, please let us know.)

The purpose of this letter is to invite you to consider submitting a book-length manuscript for our competition -- that is, if you haven't thus far published a book and also providing that you have such a completed manuscript ready. The Native Storytellers webpage also contains the guidelines for the competition -- information as to how the manuscript should be prepared, requisite length, and the deadlines involved. Briefly stated, however, the program considers a book-length poetry to be at least 50 pages of poetry (not including pages for illustrations or photos) and a book of prose (fiction, non-fiction, drama, screenplay, etc.) of at least 100 pages, with the same specifications regarding photos and illustrations.

The upcoming competition for 2009 begins on August 1, 2009 and it will close on December 31st, 2009. (Manuscripts can be received after December 31st, provided they are postmarked prior to that date.)

There is no entry fee for the competition.

Respectfully,

Geary Hobson
Project Director
geary.hobson-1@ou.edu
405/329-7729 -- home
405/325-6231 -- OU