Annie Lampman Wins 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Fiction

The editors are pleased to announce that Fiction Judge Phil Klay has chosen Annie Lampman’s story “Whom the Lion Seeks” as this year’s Fiction Prize Winner in the Dogwood Literary Prize.  Ms. Lampman will receive $1,000 and her story will be published in Dogwood’s 2019 edition.  Finalists for the prize were Lara Tupper, Kelly Grogan, and Kristin Burcham, each of whose stories will also appear in Dogwood 2019, due out in late May.

In his citation choosing Lampman’s story, “Whom the Lion Seeks,” Judge Phil Klay wrote, “‘Whom the Lion Seeks’ pulls no punches. It is a tough and gritty and richly observed story about hard physical labor, about prison life, about guilt and addiction and obsession. This makes it all the more powerful when notes of compassion, camaraderie, grace and beauty break through. It is a remarkable piece of writing in which the story of a prison fire-crew becomes invested with the weight of the main character’s whole history of trauma and loss and grasping attempts at recovery and redemption.”

Annie Lampman is an honors creative writing professor at the Washington State University Honors College. Her short fiction, narrative essays, and poetry have recently been published in journals and anthologies such as The Normal School, The Massachusetts Review,and Women Writing the West. Her poetry chapbook “Burning Time” is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her work has been awarded a Best American Essays “Notable”; a Pushcart Prize Special Mention; first place in the Everybody Writes contest; an Idaho Commission on the Arts writing grant; and a national wilderness artist’s residency through the Bureau of Land Management. She lives in Moscow with her husband, three sons, two huskies, and a cat named Bonsai.

Judge Phil Klay a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War and the author of the short story collection Redeployment, which won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction. A graduate of the Hunter College MFA program, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic Magazine, The New Yorker, and the Brookings Institution’s Brookings Essay series. He is also a contributor to Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, an anthology of veterans’ fiction.

The editors wish to thank all entrants for their dedication to craft and their support of Dogwood.  Next year’s competition will open on July 1.

Check back to the Dogwood site for the announcement of the poetry and nonfiction competitions later this month.