2013 Contests
The following awards are offered once a year by the Bellingham Review.
The 49th Parallel Award for Poetry
1st Prize: $1,000
Final Judge: Kevin Clark
The 49th Parallel is the nickname for the US/Canada border that stretches from Washington State to Minnesota. Bellingham, Washington, the home of Western Washington University and theBellingham Review lies just shy of the border.
The Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction
1st Prize: $1,000
Final Judge: Dinah Lenney
Born April 30, 1945, Annie Dillard is best known for her nature-themed writing. She has explored her past and present dealings with nature through poetry, essays and novels. Often compared to Thoreau and other transcendentalist writers, Dillard is unique in her defiance of any strict categorization. As she examines the natural world, her subjects move between wildlife, God and the human condition. Among the nine book-length publications Dillard has published over the past twenty years, her use of multiple genres allows her to seamlessly move from Virginia creeks, to the Puget Sound, to the Galapagos Islands.s
The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction
1st Prize: $1,000
Final Judge: Marjorie Sandor
Born in 1945 in Alabama, Wolff has been regarded as the master of memoir and short stories. His best known work, This Boy’s Life, recounts the story of his early childhood years in the Northwest and was the basis for a 1993 motion picture starring Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio. A three-time winner of the O. Henry Award, Tobias Wolff is celebrated for his collections of short stories, novels, and memoirs. Wolff’s second collection of short stories, Back in the World (1985), was hailed as a sensitive work of fiction focusing primarily on the experiences of returning Vietnam veterans. In literary circles, Wolff is revered as much as a teacher as he is as a writer. After completing a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, Wolff served as the Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at that institution (1975-1978). He later spent 17 years leading the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University (1980-97). In 1997, he returned to Stanford where he currently resides and teaches.