Proud to Be: Writing By American Warriors, volume 12
Publication: 11/11/2023
Pages: 254
Award Winning Fiction
Jillian Danback-McGhan – Convergence (Winner)
Thom Brucie – The Executor (Honorable Mention)
Paul Hellweg – It Was a Rotten War (Honorable Mention)
Additional Fiction
Elaine Little – Crazy Girl
Brenna Humphreys – Step in Time
S.E. Reed – A Peaceful Life in the Swamp
Tanya Whitney – The Cube
Craig Gridelli – Cometh the Storm
Jay Harden – Speak of the Dead
Jamie Boss – Night Attack
Alan J Wahnefried – Chihuahua Drones
William Smutko – Conflict
Robert Raven – Cicadas
Award Winning Poetry
Lisa Wence Conners – Registering Voters for the First Bosnian Democratic Election, 1996 (Winner)
Victoria Garton – Hummingbird Bailout (Honorable Mention)
Gordon Kippola – Never Conjure Your Hero from the Grave (Honorable Mention)
Additional Poetry
Darlene Anita Scott
– Once the Bar-Girls Are Drunk on Rice Wine
– Di-Di Mau
– The Quick and the Dead
Charity Winters
– How to remain faithful when they kill your darlings
-post re-deployment—best laid plans
J.F. Connolly
– Vietnam
– The Projectionist
Bruce Sydow – Lord, Let the Water Run Clear
Chad Corrigan – Artillery
Michael Foran – The Tending
Stuart Reininger – The Raffles Hotel
St. Leger “Monty” Joynes – Keeper of the Cave
Victoria Garton
– In His Own Words: Found Poetry
– Flyover for a WWII POW
Carl “Papa” Palmer – Dalton
James Hugo Rifenbark
– A Thin Place
– Day’s Light Makes Everything Clear
– Lam Son 719
T.M. Hudenburg – notes from an underground den
Robert Funderburk
– KIA Minus One
– Political Harvest
– Pilgrim at Ponte Du Hoc
Valerie Young – The Invisible War
Ben White
– Masculinity #4 Audacity
– Warriors
Phil LoSchiavo – Twilight Tattoo
Gordon Kippola – Inquisite Civillian
Dale Eikmeier – Guardians on the Wall
Ashley Wiser
– The War Dead
– Winters
AM Larks – Soldier Now
Kevin Knight – Permanent Change of Station (PCS)
Milton J. Bates – The Green Trunk
Carol Krauss – Operation Rolling Thunder
Jacob Bernard-MacPherson – ’Til the End
Lisa Wence Connors
– Retreat, a Haibun
– Re-integration
Award Winning Photography
Willy Conley – Cannons of Fort Marion (now renamed to Castillos de San Marcos), St. Augustine, Florida (Winner)
Paul Bachar Jr. – TR-569 (Honorable Mention)
Nate Didier – Hallowed Ground (Honorable Mention)
Additional Photography
A. Sean Taylor
– Flying to Iraq
– Humvee
– Iraq 4
Erik Tynan – Lonely Crane at Low Tide
James Rifenbark – Pathfinder Talking with Helicopter
Peyton Roberts – Keeping Dad in Our Sites
Paul Bachar Jr. – Air Force
Willy Conley
– Texas War Heroes Monument
– Dying Breed
Award Winning Essays
Anne Kniggendorf – What Is Caesar’s (Winner)
Evelyn M. Potochny – The Solace of Juxtapositions (Honorable Mention)
Cyn Kitchen – Nothing Could Prepare Me (Honorable Mention)
Additional Essays
Susan Howard – My Son’s War
Charlie Jacobson – Jamie
Travis Harman – First Blood
Paul Bachar Jr. – How I Ended Up in the Air Force
St. Leger “Monty” Joynes – New Orleans at War
Robert Robeson – Risking It All for an Enemy Officer
Elaine Little – Bitter Tea
Leland Woodson – Days End
J.P. Ewing – A Pilot Looks at Twenty
J.G.P. MacAdam – Yongsan on the Han
Siren Hand – Between Candy & Hard-ass