Everett Southwest Literary Award Announces 2023 Contest Winners
Liberal Arts News and Events
April 7, 2023
The University of Central Oklahoma Department of English is proud to announce the winners of the latest bi-annual contest cycle for the Everett Southwest Literary Award. The contest is generously sponsored by the Mark Allen Everett family and called for short story manuscripts from authors residing in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.
Contest director and UCO professor of English, Connie Squires, Ph.D., commended the judges’ performance.
“We received eighteen exceptional manuscripts this year,” Squires said. “Six UCO Creative Writing students, including my assistant, Melody Coco, did great work judging the preliminary round.”
Award-winning indigenous fiction writer Brandon Hobson, Ph.D., signed on to act as the final judge for this year’s contest. Hobson is an alumnus of the Creative Writing Masters Program at the University of Central Oklahoma and a National Book Award finalist and Guggenheim Fellow who teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University and the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Gay Pasley
Gay Pasley was selected as the first-place winner with a prize of $5,000 for their short story “My Story Begins in Water.”
“The stories in ‘My Story Begins in Water’ contain a lyrical and urgent blend of past and present,” Hobson said. “They are about grief and love, race and struggle, and so much more. The author unearths layers of history, from her youth to adulthood, in this gorgeous evocation. A stunning and powerful book.”
Gay Pasley, M.F.A., is a professional nurse, an award-winning community leader and a photographer whose artistry is featured in Loud Zoo, Abstract Magazine and Maintenant: A Journal of Dada Writing and Art. She is a graduate of the Oklahoma City Red-Earth M.F.A. Program and has publications appearing or forthcoming in Thread Literary Magazine, Hard Crackers Press, Elsewhere Magazine, Amistad, Transitions, Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing, Morkan’s Horse, Minola Review, Flatbush Review, and Obsidian; Cliterature and Arts in the African Diaspora. Pasley’s photography and writing seek to capture the under-reported experiences and challenges of what it is to be a working-class woman of color.
J. Buentello Benavides
Buentello Benavides was selected as the second-place winner with a prize of $3,000 for their short story“Border Girls.”
Regarding “Border Girls,” Hobson said, “The stories in ‘Border Girls’ contain the empathy and imagination of a writer who has mastered the craft of storytelling. ‘We love the idea of America and not the America we actually see,’ [the author] tells us, and she’s right: these stories never shy away from the struggles of freedom for border town girls and of beauty and resilience, told in crystal-clear prose.”
Benavides is a writer, teacher, editor and translator. Her prose and translations have appeared in The Florida Review, Denver Quarterly, Newfound, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Among her awards, several of her translated poems were previously nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her short stories have been named finalist for the Newfound Prose Prize and finalist for The Florida Review’s Editors’ Prize. Previously, she served as managing editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.
Matthew Pitt
Matthew Pitt was selected as the third-place winner with a prize of $1,000 for their short story “Unusual Poisons.”
“The signal characteristic of the stories in “Unusual Poisons” is its lush prose and lyricism,” said Hobson. “These are stories about relationships, work, friendship, among other things, written with boundless compassion and precision.”
An evening of celebration with the three winners reading from their manuscripts will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 19 in the UCO College of Liberal Arts Lecture Hall, LAS L01. Event admission is free and open to the public.
For more information about the event or the contest, please contact Dr. Squires: csquires1@uco.edu.