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Winners in Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library’s annual Author of the Year contest gather for photos during a reception in their honor. They included Hannah Garman (from left) and Emmanuel Mupeta Kabula, who tied for second in the prose category; Leslie Carmean, second in poetry; Heather Crivilare, first in prose; Lydia Tosh, first in prose; and Hayden Hamel, first in poetry. Shirley Bilyeu\u00a0won third place in the poetry division.<\/p>\n
Angela Bauer\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library celebrated words and the authors who write them during a reception honoring the group\u2019s Author of the Year contest winners.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe like to showcase writing and the talent in our community,\u201d said Siobhan Warren, a Friends member and part of the contest committee. \u201cFriends of the Library are interested in supporting not only reading but the written word, in general. This allows people of all ages \u2014 we have high school students ages 16 all the way through senior citizens to participate in this. It allows people, especially those who are no longer in school, to practice their writing skills and to show off their ability and allow other people to see the good ideas and the writing they have inside of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Cash prizes were awarded Thursday to the top finishers in poetry and prose divisions of the competition.<\/p>\n
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Hayden Hamel reads his poem, “A Conversation with the Night,” after winning first place in the poetry division of Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library’s Author of the Year contest. Winners in both the poetry and prose divisions were honored Thursday during a reception at the library.<\/p>\n
Angela Bauer\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
Hayden Hamel, 18, and a senior at Routt Catholic High School, won first place in the poetry division with his poem, \u201cA Conversation with the Night.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote it last year, probably about exactly a year ago,\u201d Hamel said. \u201cI was going through a pretty dark time then, and I started to come toward the end of it. So my poem is pretty dark \u2026 but at the end there\u2019s just that last line of hope in it. It was just kind of something I wrote in one sitting and was just very quick. I think it was just a culmination of emotions I was feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hamel, who has enlisted in the Air National Guard and been accepted to the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, where he intends to pursue a degree in global studies, also entered the prose competition with a story about the differing perspectives of a military general and a soldier.<\/p>\n
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Binders available at the front desk at Jacksonville Public Library contain copies of past years’ winners of Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library’s Author of the Year contest.<\/p>\n
Angela Bauer\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
Lydia\u00a0Tosh, 20, and a Lincoln Land Community College-Jacksonville student, also focused on hope in her third-place prose entry. Her story, inspired as a counterpoint to a work by \u201cdirty realism\u201d writer and poet Raymond Carver, tells of a young person whose dreams for the future have been derailed. As a result, the day-to-day grind of working in a dead-end job is taking its toll.<\/p>\n
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Carver \u201cwrote about blue-collar depression and his short stories rarely ended well,\u201d Tosh said. \u201cHe believed that it was more comforting for someone in a bad situation to read about the world as it was rather than having lofty morals or good endings. \u2026 I don\u2019t agree with his thinking. I believe that the world\u2019s not all bad. It\u2019s not all good, either, but it\u2019s not all bad. I believe even people in the worst situations \u2026 everyone has at least some moment of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other winners in the poetry category were Leslie Carmean, second place; and Shirley Bilyeu, third place.<\/p>\n
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Heather Crivilare reads her entry in the prose division of Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library’s Author of the Year contest. Winners in both the poetry and prose divisions were honored Thursday during a reception at the library.<\/p>\n
Angela Bauer\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
Other winners in the prose category were Heather\u00a0Crivilare, first place; and Emmanuel Mupeta Kabula and Hannah Garman, tied for second place.<\/p>\n
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First-place winners received $250, second place earned $100 and third place took home $50, with prizes furnished by The Farmers State Bank and Trust Co.<\/p>\n
Crivilare\u2019s winning short entry covered a relatable experience \u2014 the \u201cvery mixed feelings you have when someone you\u2019re related to passes away that you had a difficult relationship with. You don\u2019t always grieve the way you think you would grieve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kabula\u2019s story has a less familiar setting \u2014 Nigeria rather than west-central Illinois \u2014 though it carries a similar theme of how people deal with loss, whether shutting it away or carrying it with them, he said.<\/p>\n
The diversity of voices \u2014 the contest\u2019s rules stipulate only that the authors and poets be at least 16 and a Morgan County resident \u2014 is a large part of the appeal, Warren said.<\/p>\n
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A table display touts Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library during a reception for its Author of the Year contest winners. Winners in both the poetry and prose divisions were honored Thursday evening during a reception at the library.<\/p>\n
Angela Bauer\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a couple of high school students, some people out of high school and not as many adults\u201d this year, Warren said. \u201cLast year we had a retiree who was in his 80s all the way down to a 16-year-old. That was especially fun to have the full gamut of ages in the competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The writing competition is a tradition for the Friends group and one not expected to end anytime soon, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe enjoy doing this,\u201d Warren said. \u201cWe always have a full slate of judges and many people who enter the competition. We always feel kind of worried \u2014 are people going to turn things in, are they going to write poems? But there are always many, many to judge between. There\u2019s so much talent in our community, and we enjoy seeing all of it and giving a place for people to showcase their work.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Longtime Friends of the Library volunteer Don Pigg, 90, also was honored during the evening. Pigg is retiring \u2014 again, as he put it \u2014 from the Friends board after so many years of volunteering that no one could pinpoint a start date.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Board Vice President Mary Lou\u00a0Lael also credited Pigg for helping to start the library\u2019s children\u2019s garden and a longtime nature series for adults at the library.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really don\u2019t know how we will fill Don\u2019s garden shoes,\u201d Lael said, \u201cbecause Don spends so many extra hours \u2014 other than the time that we\u2019re with the children \u2014 watering and weeding, which can really get out of control really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The competition\u2019s winning entries \u2014 this year\u2019s and past year\u2019s \u2014 are collected in binders at the library\u2019s main circulation desk for anyone wanting to read them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Winners in Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library’s annual Author of the Year contest gather for photos during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,115,278],"class_list":["post-236840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}