(Editor's note)
Over the years Mary won three first place cash prizes in our Preservation Foundation annual nonfiction story contests and was runner-up three times as well, an unequaled record.Mary was over ninety when she pasted away, but her memoir based on the secret five-year diary she kept as a teenager, from 1935-1939 is available. Click here to buy Book 1.
You can buy any of the five volumes of the secret diaries or her travel book as paperbacks or download the Kindle editions from Amazon.Mary' earlier biographical statement.
I've spent most of this year entering various kinds of writing contests, mainly for the experience, and also it's good practice to have to write something to conform with their requirements, either subject or word count.
In May 2005 two of my poems, "The Ballad of Trapper McGrew," and "The Garden Party," were included in a book of rhyming only poems published in Canada. Out of the 200+ entries, only 50 people were considered. Copies of "New Classic Poems" has now been sent to the Library of Canada (equivalent to the U.S. Library of Congress), the University of Alberta; Edmonton Public Library; University of Toronto; University of Western Ontario; Trinity College School; McMaster University, and the public libraries of Port Perry, Toronto, Oshawa, Clarington, London, and Kirkland Lake, Ontario.
One of the contests I entered, which is conducted every month, was to write a story using ONLY 100 words, no more and no less. For July 2005 my story "Heat Wave" was selected.
