We are very pleased to announce the three prize winners for the Daisy Pettles Women Writers Contest 2022-23 Grant Cycle:
Jeanne Genis– Flossmoor, IL
Work in Progress: Woman with Firefly, a debut novel about a deceased woman and how her life, beginning with her childhood fascination of insects and nature, affects her art and engenders positive change about environmental issues in her small town and farming community.
Grand Prize: $1,000 Cash Prize, PLUS Free 30-day Residency as Writer in Residence at the Daisy Pettles House in Bedford, Indiana, USA, a vintage 1920s bungalow, equipped with all the amenities a women writer needs to write her heart out, undisturbed, for a month.
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Francine Daniels – North Hollywood, CA
1st Runner-Up: $200 Cash Grant; PLUS Award Certificate as Finalist
Work in Progress: TV Pilot for “Revelation: In God We Gay,” a look into a Black family residing in a South Bronx housing project in the 60s-70s; an edgy and irreverent TV series that follows the coming-of-age journey of a rebellious and gifted twelve-year-old girl who struggles with her lesbian identity as she is torn between the devout Catholic and God-fearing Baptist sides of her family.
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Amy Eaton – Chicago, IL
2nd Runner-Up: $75 Cash Grant; PLUS Award Certificate as Finalist
Work in Progress: Memoir, Everyone Else is Where They Want to Be, explores the fallout of a free-range childhood, modern promiscuity and its power in defining a woman’s sense of self; the journey of finding a new familial tribe in the Chicago theater and music communities—one of both blood and chosen creative allegiances—without the benefit of a playbook.
Congratulations to these three winners, the four other finalists, and all of the women writers who submitted their entries.