On June 7th through 12, Boldface 2010 went into full swing. To the casual passerby, a crowd of students in plaid shirts and jeans gathered in tightly knit groups. Some laughed hysterically, others read to themselves in a corner next to a plant, and still others, sipping coffee, wove in and out of conversations that discussed “caesura” and “metonymy” in that shared language so vital to understanding craft. Such is the character of Glass Mountain‘s Boldface Conference for Emerging Writer – a scattering of minds in that small sunlit space between the Honors College and Special Collections.
But the real treasure of Boldface is the emergence of the writing community: that rare communion that is found in a conversation about voice, aesthetic, line breaks, and narrative structure. Graduate-level, undergraduate level, published, unpublished, editor, struggling writer – all in conversation about how strange it is to be alive.
You can still hear it.
We asked the participants of the 2010 Boldface Conference to submit their revised work to the Robertson Prize Contest for Excellence in Creative Writing. It is our pleasure to announce the winners and runners up in each genre:
In Poetry, Laura Theobald, for “There Was a War”
Runners Up: Derrick Austin, “Sleeping Under an Oak”
Nicole Walker, “Full Volume”
In Fiction, Heather Pedoto, for her novel excerpt
Runners up: Stan Le, “Visions of Elijah”
Wesley Buhler, “Places Called Home”
Congratulations!