2024 Award Winners

This year’s competition was strong with nearly eight hundred submissions sent in and our judges both enjoyed and were challenged by each piece. Categories were Prose Poetry, Poetry, Fiction, and Non-fiction/Essay/Memoir. Each piece was graded on quality/caliber, emotion, style/imagery, capture attention/surprise, and uniqueness/memorability. Judges read each piece without knowing the author or who any of the other judges were, to keep it as unbiased as possible. Without further ado, Raw Earth Ink, the editors, and judges are proud to present the 2024 winners to you.

Prose Poetry

• 1st Place – Gray Baby Hairs by Summer Chambley
• 2nd Place – dear entomophobic america by Amanda Trout
• 3rd Place – Once Upon A Rain, She Bloomed by Braeden Michaels
• 4th Place – Mountain Baptism by Susan Mason Scott
• Top Ten – Jackknife Café by Braeden Michaels
• Top Ten – Night Wanderings by K.S. Dearsley
• Top Ten – Mr. Handsome by Anne Marie Wells
• Top Ten – Where to Put Henry by Shoshauna Shy
• Top Ten – First Snowfall by P.T. McAllister
• Top Ten – On Collagic Memories by Donna Myers
• Top Ten – Hebrew Children vs. Philistine Giants by Robert B. Robeson
• Top Ten – We Have Chickens in Our Backyard by Vidyaroopini Nair
• Top Ten – Beans for Thought by J.R. Woods
• Top Ten – One More Thing by Jessica Natasha Lawrence
• Honorable Mention – Silent Assassin by Brady Kent
• Honorable Mention – Leap Day and the Summer Sun by Svetlana Litvinchuk
• Honorable Mention – Bywater Bay by Deborrah Corr
• Honorable Mention – A Picture of the London Dream by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
• Honorable Mention – Restoration by Colm O’Shea
• Honorable Mention – Dark Glen by Joyce Frohn
• Honorable Mention – The Bliss of a Glittering Horizon by Rebel Brown

Poetry

• 1st Place – Year One by Laurinda Lind
• 2nd Place – We Entered Stone’s Dominion by Joseph William Vass
• 3rd Place – Luminous by Teresa K. Burleson
• 4th Place – The Various by Matt Dennison
• Top Ten – Secret Conversations by Tom Conlan
• Top Ten – The House Upon The Hill by H Peters
• Top Ten – Lines for Painting on Grains of Rice Harvested in Stardew Valley by Kait Quinn
• Top Ten – slef protriat by Alex Baskin
• Top Ten – Swallows on the Porch by Rachael Ikins
• Top Ten – Meditation by Jack Harness
• Top Ten – The Smaller Picture by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
• Top Ten – Ruinous by Ahona Dam
• Top Ten – Normal Hydrocephalus by Suzette Bishop
• Top Ten – Persephone’s First Season in Hell by Alison Stone
• Honorable Mention – Goat in the Corner by Deborrah Corr
• Honorable Mention – Succession: The Time It Takes to Heal by Erin Robertson
• Honorable Mention – Send Me by Katie Moino
• Honorable Mention – Witness by Aimee R. Cervenka
• Honorable Mention – recovery: on learning my recovered father secretly drank until his death by Erin Robertson
• Honorable Mention – Arpeggiotic by Angela Cummings
• Honorable Mention – Shivers Down My Spine by Braeden Michaels
• Honorable Mention – acoustic punk sad sestina midnight by Amanda Trout
• Honorable Mention – A Wing-stroked Spectacle by Daniel Moreschi
• Honorable Mention – Soul in Ice by Lowell Klessig
• Honorable Mention – Blitz of Growing by Camille Hiltbrand
• Honorable Mention – Autumnal Whispers by Susan Mayer Brumel
• Honorable Mention – You do not have to be good by Carolyn Martin
• Honorable Mention – Quoth the Poet by Patricia Doyne
• Honorable Mention – The Storm by Neil Vincent Scott
• Honorable Mention – Red Dress by Kelly J. Sullivan

Fiction

• 1st Place – Like a Pearl by Mei Davis
• 2nd Place – Green Tights by Sherry Morris
• 3rd Place – Erase Every Plate by Dominik Slusarczyk
• 4th Place – Fresno Fog by Terry Sanville
• Top Ten – Double Wide by Nathan Alling Long
• Top Ten – Passenger by E.J. Brady
• Top Ten – The Snuffing of Minor Fires by Jeffrey S. Markovitz
• Top Ten – The Last Letter by Dianne Taylor Dunham
• Top Ten – I Won’t Let This Build Up Inside of Me by Chris Cochran
• Top Ten – Against All Odds by Kevin Novalina
• Top Ten – Johnny Eisen Makes Good by Angus McLinn
• Top Ten – Wasteland Survivors by Kevin Novalina
• Top Ten – Angels in the Attic by Amaria Stone
• Top Ten – Nightcrawlers by Nick Young
• Honorable Mention – An Ode to Those Who Believe in Luck (And All That Lovey-Dovey Stuff) by Sherry Morris
• Honorable Mention – A Boy and the Fox Who Ate His Mother by Jess Weixler-Landis
• Honorable Mention – Casey’s Cricket Factory by Chez Bratache
• Honorable Mention – Rites by Shane Camoin
• Honorable Mention – Magic Doors by John Raisor
• Honorable Mention – The Dust Offensive by Harriet Radford
• Honorable Mention – The Girl Upstairs by Chris Cochran

Non-fiction

• 1st Place – Peeling Tomatoes by China Braekman
• 2nd Place – The Color of Heartache by Ann Kathryn Kelly
• 3rd Place – Beach Cleaned Eyes by Joe Labriola
• 4th Place – Fidelity by Charlotte Crowder
• Top Ten – With the Time Left by Heidi Lasher
• Top Ten – Only Two Sides by Devon Jeffers Valdes
• Top Ten – My Mother’s Keeper (EXCERPT) by Sandy Benson
• Top Ten – Travelling Home by Fiona Ritchie Walker
• Top Ten – Barn Swallows and Thistle by Tom Wade
• Top Ten – Look Back Big Savage by David Summerfield
• Top Ten – Torn Between Two Cultures by Kim Kiedaisch
• Top Ten – She Who Hears the Cries of the World by Winter Ross
• Top Ten – Over the Rainbow by Harvey Silverman
• Top Ten – My Grandmother by Ahona Dam
• Honorable Mention – Essay: Sun Tzu and Entertainment: The Lion King’s Fall of Scar by Andrew Nickerson
• Honorable Mention – Essay: Finding Nick Drake: Richard Morton Jack’s New Biography by Tyler Martinez

The 2024 Northwind Treasury is available in paperback at Lulu, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon, as well as eBook on Kindle. Goodreads.