Mil-Writing Contest Expands to Include Family

Darron L. Wright PHOTO: Line of Advance

Editors of Chicago-based non-profit literary journal Line of Advance have announced an expansion of the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards will include additional prose (includes fiction, creative non-fiction, and hybrid forms) and poetry categories for spouses, parents, and children of U.S. service members and veterans.

Since 2016, the Wright Awards have annually recognized excellence in prose and poetry by U.S. military service members and veterans. With today's announcement, the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards expands to four categories. Cash prizes of $250, $150, and $100 will be available in each of the following:

• Service Member/Veteran Prose (includes fiction, creative non-fiction, hybrid)
• Service Member/Veteran Poetry
• Family Member Prose (includes fiction, creative non-fiction, hybrid)
• Family Member Poetry

“The Line of Advance proudly serves as a leading venue for the best of ‘veterans-lit,’ with works by men and women who have served in all uniforms and in all eras,” says the journal’s editor-in-chief Christopher Lyke, who will also edit the anthology. “We are also grateful to the underwriters of our cash prizes, who, through their generosity, help promote creatively crafted veterans’ stories to wider audiences.”

“Also, by expanding the contest to include family members, we hope to better recognize the scope of sacrifices military families make on our behalf, in war and peace,” Lyke says. “Some of today’s most insightful, inspiring literary engagement on themes of war and service is coming from military-adjacent writers.”

In February, Line of Advance announced that a forthcoming print and e-book anthology will collect the winning entries from the first five years (2016-2020) of the competition. The anthology will be published in October 2020. This year’s Darron L. Wright award finalists will be included in the anthology.

Submissions for the 2020 Darron L. Wright awards open May 1, 2020 and close May 31, 2020. Winners will be notified not later than Aug. 31, 2020. More details are forthcoming.

Administered by the journal since 2016, and underwritten by the Blake and Bailey Foundation, the awards commemorate a U.S. Army leader and author who was killed in a September 2013 parachute training accident. Darron L. Wright, 45, had deployed three times to Iraq, and was author of a 2012 memoir “Iraq Full Circle: From Shock and Awe to the Last Combat Patrol in Baghdad and Beyond.”

Middle West Press LLC is a Johnston, Iowa-based editor and publisher of non-fiction, fiction, journalism, and poetry, with projects that feature the unique voices of the American Midwest. As an independent micro-press, we publish one to four titles annually. The Line of Advance/Col. Darron L. Wright Awards anthology will be the sixth of our titles involving war and military themes.