CNY Pen Women Rock the House in Biennial Competitions

Congratulations to all of our CNY Branch Letters and Art members who entered and to those who won awards in the 2022 Biennial competitions. This year was a particularly difficult year to win considering the number of Letters entries and quality of those submissions. There were 323 submissions in Letters. There were 97 Letters members entering from 19 states. The information for the Art competition is still ongoing, but Joan Applebaum's and Susan Murphy's work has been selected for the Biennial exhibition.

All Letters winners will receive their awards at the Letters luncheon on May 1 during the Biennial at The Darcy hotel in Washington, D.C.

Congratulations to Janine DeBaise who won first place for "Wings" in Category C; first place for Cattail Summer: The Salazar Sisters and The Baby Beaver in Category N; third place for "Her Garden" in Category P; third place for "Breath" in Category A; Honorable Mention for "Learning Arabic in London" in Category I, with Category B yet to be decided.

Congratulations to Judith McGinn who won first place for her short story "Secret Burial" in Category J, the category our CNY Branch sponsored! Judith also earned an honorable mention for her poem "In Yellow Houses" in Category D, a poem written in ekphrastic response to the Schweinfurth "Made in New York" exhibition.

Congratulations to Janet Fagal who won first place for "Family Reunion" in Category A, the most hotly contested of all the competitions (greatest number of entries). Janet wrote "Family Reunion" in ekphrastic response to the Schweinfurth "Made in New York" exhibition. (We had better keep up this arrangement with the Schweinfurth!)

Congratulations to Mary Gardner who won second place for her essay "Peaches" in Category K. The judges wrote a note that this competition was particularly difficult to decide the winners among the top three.

Congratulations to Karen Hempson who won third place for her middle school story "A Better Life" in Category N. Karen's story is a fictional remaking of her published book The Bean Pickers.

The six judges are all college English professors and writers themselves. All submissions were judged anonymously with two rounds of judging.

The CNY Branch had the greatest number of Letters winners of any branch in the country for the second Biennial in a row. There were only four multiple award winners in the country, and Janine DeBaise was one of them.