The Four Corners Writers will finish judging the entries they received for their first anthology “Four Corner’s Voices” in the next few weeks, and an event to celebrate the entries and the anthology will take place Nov. 13.
The event will be held from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Cortez Public Library and will honor the selected writers. The cover art will also be revealed.
Submissions for the anthology were accepted in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and cover art. Submissions were due Sept. 1. Selected writers will receive a “small stipend,” and the artist chosen for the anthology’s cover will receive $250.
The cover art was selected by the Four Corners Writers’ board.
During the event, representatives from the LOR Foundation, who helped fund the project with the city of Cortez’s 81321 Launch Program, will speak with the panel of the anthology’s editors, Mark Stevens, nonfiction judge; Lisa Taylor, poetry judge; and Chuck Greaves, fiction judge.
All three the judges are local authors.
Out of the more than 150 submissions received, 12 stories, 13 essays and 24 poetry submissions will be selected. Taylor told The Journal that she received more than 90 poems to review. She added that she didn’t look at the names of the authors until she had made her selections.
“It was hard to choose 24. What I can tell you is there was a range of voices and many represented the beauty of this part of the world though some poems were more personal. It was an honor to know that there are secret poets all around here,” Taylor said.
The topics in the poems ranged from literature to poems of travel to odes to the Southwest, “concerns like school shootings” and more.
“I read every poem about four times and then went back to the 40 finalists to choose my 24,” Taylor said.
While the Four Corners Writers have been part of the community for some time, they only just became a nonprofit a few months ago.
The group meets every third Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Zu Gallery in Cortez, and the members said it is open to anyone, writer or not.
Greaves said the purpose is to “identify, develop and promote literary voices in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.”
“We hope the public will turn out to support Four Corners Writers in these efforts and that the anthology is a local bestseller,” Greaves told The Journal. “We also hope that proceeds from the sale of this year’s anthology will fund a similar effort next year and perhaps for many years to come.”
