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In honor of Cos Barnes, the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities offers an annual merit-based fellowship for one North Carolina writer.

Cos Barnes, a talented writer and former chair of Weymouth’s Residency Program, was dedicated to its writers and poets.

The recipient will be awarded a one-week residency at Weymouth and a $500.00 stipend.

Submissions for the Cos Barnes Fellowship in Fiction are open from May 1 through July 31.

 

A new link to submit your entries will be added in May.

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The 2019 Cos Barnes Fellow in Fiction was presented to

Julia Ridley Smith

“At the Arrowhead”

Julia Ridley Smith’s short stories and essays have appeared most recently in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the New England Review, and The Southern Review. A North Carolina native, she earned a BA in English at UNC Chapel Hill and an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Julia has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a Tennessee Williams Scholar in fiction at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, artist-in-residence at the Millay Colony, and Crossfield Fellow at the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency. She lives with her family in her hometown, Greensboro, where she teaches in the English Department at UNCG. When not walking her dog around the neighborhood, she volunteers as a docent at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, helps coordinate the Greensboro Bound Literary Festival, and serves as the editor of Inch, a literary journal focused on the miracles of compression. She is currently at work on a novel.

Here’s what final judge Holly Goddard Jones said about Julia’s piece:    

“This story packed a lot of life in its pages–a lot of characters and the complicated dynamics between them, a lot of heavy history that informs Sharla’s actions in the present. But the author manages this bounty with skill and delicacy. I thought I knew what the reveal would be, but then the landing was softer, subtler, and more affecting than the one I’d predicted.”

The office at Weymouth Center has a copy of “At the Arrowhead” for you to read. Please stop by weekdays between 10 and 2.

 

Congratulations to the Cos Barnes Fiction Fellow 2019 Honorable Mentions:

“Reunification” by Theresa Dowell Blackinton

Theresa Dowell Blackinton’s work has appeared in The Iowa Review and is forthcoming in Pleiades, and her shorts stories have won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Betty Gabehart Prize for Fiction, and the NCSU Prize for Short Fiction. Theresa has received fellowships to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, Artsmith, and Wildacres, and she is the recipient of an Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant

 

“Feasts of the Heart” by Gary Powell

Gary V. Powell, a recovering lawyer, is currently a stay-at-home dad and all-around handy-man. His fiction can be read in many literary journals including the Thomas Wolfe Review, Carvezine, Fiction Southeast, Atticus Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Best New Writing 2015, and Pisgah Review. His first novel, Lucky Bastard, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing (2012). Two collections of short stories and flash fiction, Beyond Redemption and Getting Even and Other Stories, were released in 2015 and 2019.

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Previous winners-

2018 Cos Barnes Fellowship in Fiction winner, Christine Hennessey.

2017 Cos Barnes Fellowship in Fiction winner, Anita Collins.

 

Submission Guidelines for the Cos Barnes Fellowship in Fiction:

The Cos Barnes Fellowship in Fiction is open to all North Carolina writers or writers with a North Carolina connection.

*Stories must be double-spaced, 12 pt., Times New Roman, up to 6000 words. Please number and title every page. (.doc/.docx files only)

*Submit your best work. Previously published is acceptable.

*Submissions will be read blind. Submittable will collect and record your contact information. Please do NOT include a cover sheet with your piece.

*Entry fee is $15.00 per submission for Weymouth Writers (to qualify you must have taken a residency in the past year) and Friends of Weymouth members. All others will be $20.00 per submission.

*Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted.

*No erotica or gratuitous violence

We are open to work that represents the full variety of humanity. We have no bias toward race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, or physical limitation. 

Thank you to the Cos Barnes Fellowship in Fiction Review Committee for volunteering their time and expertise to the Weymouth Center for Arts & Humanities.

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