Celebrating Emerging Writers - Methodist University

Office of University Relations
5400 Ramsey Street • Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311-1498
(800) 488-7110 • (910) 630-7043 • FAX (910) 630-7253
www.methodist.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 1. 2011
PAM MCEVOY
DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY RELATIONS
FAYETTEVILLE, NC—Methodist University’s 22 nd annual Southern Writers
Symposium announces its call for submissions to its Emerging Writers Contest. Symposium
organizers seek submissions in fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction, especially as it relates to
military topics.
Each category’s first- and second-place writers will receive cash awards of $300 and
$200, respectively, and will read from their winning work at the March 17, 2012 Southern
Writers Symposium on Methodist University’s campus. The contest is open to writers who meet
at least two of the following criteria: 1) currently live in the South; 2) are a native of the South;
and 3) write about the South. Additionally, writers must have not yet published a full-length
volume in the genre that they enter for the Emerging Writers Contest. All submissions are due
January 2, 2012, and a $15 entry fee per submission is required.
“We are excited about the 2012 Southern Writers Symposium and believe that this year’s
entries to the Emerging Writers Contest will continue the tradition of writing excellence we’ve
enjoyed for more than two decades,” said Brenda Jernigan, Director of Methodist University’s
Southern Writers Symposium. “We are especially pleased and honored that Darnell Arnoult and
Dr. David Rigsbee, two award-winning Southern authors, will serve as judges and share their
work with us during this year’s Symposium.”
Darnell Arnoult will judge fiction entries to the Emerging Writers Contest and serve as
keynote speaker of the Southern Writers Symposium. Writer-in-Residence and Assistant
Professor of English at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, Arnoult is the
author of the prize-winning collection “What Travels With Us: Poems,” published by LSU Press,
and the novel “Sufficient Grace,” published by Free Press. Arnoult has received the Weatherford
Award for Appalachian Literature, the Mary Frances Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters, and in
2007, was named Tennessee Writer of the Year by the Tennessee Writers Alliance.
Judging poetry entries to the Emerging Writers Contest and Symposium presenter is Dr.
David Rigsbee. Author of twenty books and chapbooks, Dr. Rigsbee has published critical works
on Carolyn Kizer and Joseph Brodsky, whom he also translated. In 2010, Dr. Rigsbee received
the Sam Ragan Award for distinguished contribution to the arts in North Carolina and the Oscar