1 of 3
2 of 3
3 of 3
WINNER Laura Long, What Will Burn Author Laura Long's upbringing in Buckhannon, W.Va., served as the inspiration for her winning manuscript, What Will Burn . "The genesis was the West Virginia setting where I grew up, in the sense of the lush beauty of the countryside and how it affects the people who live there," she explains. Long, an associate professor of English at Lynchburg College, has published two books of poetry and numerous short stories, but this is her first novel. "It is hot of the press," she says. "I finished it so that I could meet the deadline of this competition." Long has been writing What Will Burn for the past five years, working in immersive two-to-three week spurts during summer and holiday breaks from her teaching duties. Her novel intertwines the stories of three different characters, and when she writes, "I get into one of the characters' stories and completely imagine their point of view and write from that point of view." In June, she spent a few weeks at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts retreat in Amherst, polishing the work and preparing to send it off to book agents. Long says she's received interest from agents who have wanted to see a novel after they have read one of her short stories. "Now, I can actually do it." She's encouraged by winning first place in the Best Unpublished Novel contest. "I have been working on this for a long time, and I was wondering if it is going to work for someone who read it," she says. "Before the contest, I hadn't had anybody read the whole thing except my spouse, who proofread it." To read the first chapter of What Will Burn , see the July 2013 issue of Richmond magazine. Finalist: Derek Kannemeyer, The Memory Addicts The Memory Addicts is Derek Kannemeyer's first novel, which he began in the summer of 2005. It sat untouched until last year, when he fished it out of his stacks to participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. ( nanowrimo.org ). From November 2012 to February, he rewrote the original 60 pages and added 180 new ones. He plans to work on a second draft of the novel this summer. "The story was always about the distortions of memory and history, and the seductiveness of those distortions, and I know that I originally planned to have the characters end up in South Africa, where I was born, so perhaps I was hoping to come to terms with some personal history," he says. " None of that is left in the book, though." Kannemeyer, who teaches at St. Catherine's School, has been writing since he was 16 and has published short stories, personal nonfiction, theater, and "a lot of poetry." Finalist: Phyllis Hall Haislip, The Viscount's Daughter The Viscount's Daughter is historian Phyllis Hall Haislip's first adult novel and is the first volume in a trilogy she has been working on for the past five years. Haislip has published six historical novels for middle-school readers, and her first children's novel, Lottie's Courage, won the Beacon of Freedom Award, a child-chosen award. Haislip, who began writing in third grade, formerly taught history at William and Mary and the University of Richmond. Since retiring, she writes five days a week, meeting two other writers in a Williamsburg coffee shop where they write side-by-side from 9 a.m. until noon. The Viscount's Daughter is based on Ermengarde of Narbonne, a medieval political and cultural leader who waged war against her husband in order to rule her inheritance herself. Haislip just completed her sixth medieval pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in France, Spain, and Portugal, no doubt conducting first-hand research for her novels.
