Writers & Illustrators of the Future Blog

The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for winners, judges, entrants and anyone interested in sharing information regarding the contests and the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future volumes. For more information you can also go to www.writersofthefuture.com

Monday, June 22, 2009

2nd Quarter Finalists, Semi-Finalists and Honorable Mentions

Dear All,

Here are the results of the initial judging. If you do not
find your name on this list, we will have a few more Honorables
come in and I will post them as soon as I get them.

drumroll please!!!!

FINALISTS:

Dario Ciriello of California
Simon Cooper of Antrim, Ireland
John Parke Davis of North Carolina
Jason Fischer of Australia
William Mitchell of London, England
Chris Tissell of Oregon
Susan Watkins of Oregon
Jeff Young of Pennsylvania

Finalists stories go to 4 of our final judges and 3 of
the above writers will be our winners for the 2nd Quarter

SEMI-FINALISTS:

Sarah Adams of California
Shelley K. Davenport of Pennsylvania
Sara King of Alaska
Geir Lanesskog of Washington
William Ledbetter of Texas
Alastair Mayer of Colorado
Nikki McCormack of Washington
Tyler Powell of Oregon
Tom Rogers of Texas
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro of California

All semi-finalists stories are critiqued by our coordinating
judge, K.D. Wentworth.


HONORABLE MENTIONS:


Scott Andrews of Virginia
John Arkwright of Georgia
Bill Beauviche of Hunsingore, United Kingdom
Chris Boardman of Colorado
Jennifer Campbell-Hicks of Colorado
Louise Caroline Booth of Lincolnshire, England
Kenneth Cassell of Utah
Travis Coates of Calgary, Canada
Lisa Janice Cohen of Massachusetts
Spencer Cramer of Missouri
Vashti Brandy of Pennsylvania
Kathryn Brown of Arizona
Terry Burlison of Washington
Gwendolyn Clare of North Carolina
Kitti Cogswell of Virginia
L.J. Daly of Pennsylvania
Christopher Donahue of Texas
Jakob Nexo Drud of Denmark
Spencer Ellsworth of Washington
Robert Mitchell Evans of California
Katrina Forest of Pennsylvania
Carole Franklin of Michigan
Kelly A. Harmon of Maryland
Brennan Harvey of California
Judith Herman of Washington
Louise Herring-Jones of Alabama
William Hipp of South Carolina
Michael Hund of Pennsylvania
Peter Jessup of California
Emily Kajsa Herrstrom of Illinois
Erik Hoel of Massachusetts
Karrin Jackson of Oregon
Amy Power Jansen of Cambridge, England
J.C. Jenkins Jr. of Mississippi
Laura K.D. Jennings of Texas
K.J. Kabza of Massachusetts
Robert Laughlin of California
Anna-Lisa Macon of Massachusetts
Muri McCage of Tennessee
Scott Mikula of Washington
Nayad A. Monroe of Wisconsin
El Montaague of Missouri
Matthew Moore of Ontario, Canada
Mark Patrick Morehead of Colorado
Josh Morrey of Utah
Scott Overton of Ontario, Canada
Michelle Pang of Toronto, Canada
Douglas Sharp of Utah
Joseph Simmons of Texas
Steen R. Southard of Maryland
Lucien Spelman of Massachusetts
A.W. Sullivan of Kentucky
Brad Torgersen of Utah
Brian Trent of Connecticut
Helen Venn of Australia
Suanne Warr of North Carolina
Desmond Warzel of Pennsylvania
Cliff Winnig of California
L.L. Wise of Oregon

posted by Joni Labaqui @ 1:34 PM  

3 Comments:

  • At June 23, 2009 at 11:42 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    I was just curious as to how it is that more honorable mentions can come in after the finalists and semi-finalists have been picked. To pick finalists and semi-finalists, all the stories had to have been read, correct? And presumably by multiple judges. What is the process for picking honorable mentions?

     

  • At June 24, 2009 at 7:06 PM , Anonymous Lucien E. G. Spelman said...

    Thanks very much for the honorable mention. It is indeed an honor for me to be in such great company.

     

  • At July 1, 2009 at 2:26 PM , Anonymous Brad R. Torgersen said...

    Anonymous,

    Here is how it works:

    1) All manuscripts go to Joni Labaqui in Los Angeles. She is the contest administrator. There they are removed from their envelopes and Joni does a basic check to be sure each manuscript is in the requested format, per contest rules. Those not in line with the rules, get rejected accordingly. That's the first cut.

    2) Everything else gets mailed to K.D. Wentworth, who then reads each manuscript. She is the "editor" and first judge, and it's she who ultimately parses the slush into rejections, Honorable Mention, Semi-Finalist, and Finalist. This process takes months, because she has to look at thousands of manuscripts per quarter. They tend to arrive at her house in chunks, and they tend to leave in chunks. This is why the HM list tends to be posted in chunks -- Joni doesn't have all the names at one time. That's the second cut.

    3) All manuscripts -- be they rejections or HM or Semi or Finalist -- go back to Joni when K.D. is done with the quarter. Joni has to re-parse, based on category, and mail out all the rejection letters, HM, and then get the Final Eight ready to be sent to the four quarterly judges. Again, this is a time-consuming process due to the large number of submissions being handled. Joni posts results as she goes, wading through the pile. Often she'll know who the Finalists and Semi-Finalists are before she's done plucking out all the HM, so there is usually a final batch of HM even after the names of the Finalists and Semi-Finalists have been posted.

    4) Joni gets the Finalists duplicated and mailed to the four quarterly judges who have been selected for that particular quarter. K.D. prepares critiques on the Semis. Judging takes still more time, during which the judges cull the Final 8 down to the three Placing manuscripts; which is done by a scoring/sum method.

    Don't worry. All manuscripts get read before the Final Eight have been chosen. I don't know specifics, but I believe K.D. has her own scoring system, so that when she's all done with EVERYTHING, she takes everything that is HM quality and parses it down to sixteen that are Semi quality, then parses those down to eight that are the Finalists.

    Hope this makes sense.

     

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home