We have selected our 2020 Rebecca Lard Award Winner!

Francis Flavin is a poet and writer who draws upon his experience as an educator, hockey player, fish and game field worker, public interest lawyer, governmental investigator, and adventurer on four continents. He has been a successful advocate for civil and indigenous rights.

Flavin’s poetry has been published in Poetry Quarterly, Blueline, Pacific Review, Blue Collar Review, La Piccioletta Barca, WestWard Quarterly, Poets Choice, and on the websites of the Society of Classical Poets and the Adirondack Center for Writing. He has received awards in humor and flash fiction in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, Summer Poetry Contest of Wingless Dreamer, and social impact in the Chicagoland Poetry Contest.

A graduate of the University of Alaska and Colorado Law School, Flavin’s legal, educational and writing careers have focused on the rights of people in poverty and racial and ethnic minorities, particularly indigenous peoples. He has extensive experience working with Inupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Athabascan, Dena’ina, Alutiiq, Tlingit and Haida peoples in Alaska, and Paiute and Shoshone people in Nevada. Flavin’s work with Alaska Natives in the Kenai Peninsula and Bristol Bay areas of Alaska led to his interest in early Russian immigration that formed the premise of The Muse in a Time of Madness.

Our 2019 Rebecca Lard Award Winner!

Arvilla Fee has been writing poems and short stories since she learned how to write in first grade.  Encouraged by many of her teachers, Arvilla went on to make a career in teaching English.  She taught both middle school and high school students for over seven years, and she has spent the last 10 years teaching college English and writing composition. 

 Arvilla is from Indiana and currently lives in Dayton, Ohio but, thanks to her husband’s Air Force career, she has also lived in Utah, Virginia, and Alabama.  She, her husband and children have also been blessed to travel to many different countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, and Japan.  All of these cultures and life experiences have provided a wealth of inspiration and have allowed Arvilla to be even more creative with her writing.

 Arvilla hopes to continue both her teaching and writing career for many years to come and to never lose her love and passion for the power of words. To Arvilla, poetry is “giving people the ability to connect with poetic language in such a way that they can say: ‘she gets me; she knows how I feel.’”

Rebecca Lard Award Winner 2018, David Anthony Sam!

 David Anthony Sam was born and spent his childhood in McKeesport PA, a coal and steel suburb of Pittsburgh. His home at the end of 36th Street abutted a woods, and the games he played on that street and the time he spent in those woods all influenced his poetry as well as his sense of the holistic ecology of all things. His neighborhood was filled with immigrants and children of immigrants, and his grandparents themselves came from Poland and Syria.

Five of his collections are in print: Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves (2014), Dark Land, White Light (1974, 2014), Early in the Day (2015) , Finite to Fail: Poems After Dickinson (2017) and Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018).

His poems have appeared in over 80 journals and he was the featured writer in Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry (2017)  and The Hurricane Review (Spring 2016) which included 36 of his poems.  Sam’s collection, A Night over Bones, received Honorable Mention in the 2016 Homebound Poetry Contest. Sam’s collection Finite to Fail: Poems After Dickinson was awarded grand prize in the 2016  GFT Press Chapbook Contest (2017).

*Rebecca Lard Award Winner 2017, Suzanne Cottrell!

Suzanne Cottrell, a member of the NC Poetry Society and NC Writers’ Network, lives with her husband and three rescue dogs in Granville County, NC.  An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, and Pilates.  She loves nature and its sensory stimuli and particularly enjoys writing and experimenting with poetry and flash fiction.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including North Carolina’s Best Emerging Poets, Poetry Quarterly, Tanka Journal, The Avocet, The Remembered Arts Journal, Plum Tree Tavern, Burningword Literary Journal, and Naturewriting.

*Honorable mentions include Deborah L. Davitt and Lianne Kamp.