Washington Writers Publishing House is a non-profit literary organization established in 1973 to foster the work of writers in the Washington-Baltimore area, and it sponsors annual prizes in poetry and fiction. The 2018 fiction prize goes to Caroline Bock, a lecturer at Marymount College, winner of the 2016 Writer Magazine short story prize for “Gargoyles and Stars,” and author of the young adult novels Lie and Before My Eyes. Her debut collection of short stories uses a mix flash fiction to full-length works to examine American life from the 1960s to the present day. This year’s winner of the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize is Jona Colson, a teacher at Montgomery College whose poetry and translations have appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. In his debut collection he uses a wide range of tones and approaches, from the whimsical to the contemplative, to make us look twice at what we consider “ordinary” reality.
