Contest winners

by Michele Regenold

So I had this idea last summer—a writing contest for Go!. I thought it would be a fun way to encourage writers and readers to think about how integral transportation is to our everyday lives.

How could I get people to submit? Provide some good prizes. Iowa State University's Professional and Scientific Council gave Go! a $3,000 grant for cash prizes and Iowa State University Book Store gift cards.

I wanted to attract professional adult writers as well as student writers, so we established 2 separate divisions for adults and students in short fiction and non-fiction categories.

Submissions by the numbers

We received a total of 50 submissions, 30 non-fiction and 20 fiction. 27 submissions came from adults and the other 23 came from high school and college students.

Thank you to all who participated in this contest. The range of topics was diverse.

Judging

All submissions were read first by Go! staff writers Roland Maldonado and Stewart McCoy and me. The 3 of us chose several stories and articles to move on to the final round of judging. None of the non-fiction articles written by students made it to the final round of judging.

In the final round, 3 non-fiction articles written by adults were judged by several members of the Iowa State University Transportation Student Association. Eric Fitzsimmons, president of the club, told me they had a tough time choosing.

The final round judges for the short stories included Rebekah Bovenmyer and Debra Marquart. Rebekah Bovenmyer is a former Go! staff writer who completed her master's in English, emphasis in creative writing, last summer.

Debra Marquart is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University. Her books include two poetry collections—Everything’s a Verb and From Sweetness—and a memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere.  Marquart is a member of The Bone People, a jazz-poetry, rhythm & blue project, with whom she has released  two CDs: Orange Parade and A Regular Dervish.  Marquart’s work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Shelby Foote Nonfiction Prize from the Faulkner Society, the PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award, the Elle Lettres Award from Elle Magazine, and a National Endowment for the Arts Prose Fellowship. 

Winners

Congratulations to the winners!

Short story

Student division: “Going Places” by Katie L. Fuller, graduate student at Iowa State University
Adult division: “Destination Vindication” by Julie Heaton

Non-fiction article

Student division: No winner named
Adult division: “Icebreakers lead the way” by Carla Joinson

Prizes

The adult division winners received $1,000 cash prizes and the student division winner won a $500 gift card.