Eight short stories from around the world "Veiled" by Rebecca Evans - Two women, centuries apart, dance a dance of seven veils to save the world. "The Seal" by Rebekah Dodson - People were unkind to the girl who grew up a seal, but one day her prince will come "The Bench" by Karen Quinnon - A mother of two, her younger party-girl sister, and a question she must ask "Of Strange Lands and People" by James Najarian - Brendan and Garo, an Armenian-American gay couple search for Brendan's birth father "Slim" by Tonya Walker - an imagined tale of a pregnant Slim Keith, second wife of film director, Howard Hawks "Sentenced to Life" by Oscar Heitmart - Future Earth: it is your right to die at thirty, break the law, and you will be sentenced to life "The Viet Kieu Casanova" by Tuan Phan - A Vietnamese-American returns 'home' as a certain kind of 'tourist' "The World I Grew Up In" by Lynne Zotalis - the innocence of a 'fifties childhood in Wisconsin does not mean there is not tragedy The writers are the winners of The Cunningham Short Story Competition, 2018, an event now in its second year, and planning for a third anthology in 2019, details at www.willowdownbook.com. Out of the eight stories one was chosen to receive an a prize of $100, and for 2018, this was Rebecca Evans, for her story VEILED. The anthology is edited by Trevor Maynard, who also edited last year's competition which resulted in the book LIFE DANCES. This features "The Dance" a short story based on the life of RH Cunningham, in whose memory The Cunningham Short Story Competition was created. The winners of the 2017 competition were Sandy Norris, Lynne Zotalis, Israela Marglait, Maria Borland, MIchael McLaughlin, and Linda DuPret. Trevor Maynard is also the editor of The Poetic Bond series of poetry anthologies, garnering poetry from new media, social and professional networking. So far 170 poets from around the globe have been published, with a new volume The Poetic Bond VIII published in November 2018. Review for LIFE DANCES "As an eclectic collection of short stories, exploring humanity and its place in the world, this neat little anthology is an interesting read." (KD, Utah) Review for THE POETIC BOND - "The poetry in these books is moving, deep, and affirming" (NC, Wisconsin) Review for TREVOR MAYNARD - "Trevor Maynard combines complicated thematic material and unites fractured images with a sure hand" (The Stage) Trevor Maynard has also edited the poetry collections, ECHOES IN THE EARTH by Pushpita Awasthi, and THE WATCHER FROM THE BEACON by Peter Alan Soron. All these books, as well as FOUR TRUTHS, a collection of one-act plays by Trevor Maynard, are available on Amazon
About the Author: Trevor Maynard (editor) Editor of the Cunningham Short Story Anthologies Life Dances (2017) and Our World, Your Place (2018), Trevor Maynard started his writing career with a series of poetry pamphlets printed off an old Roneo printer, and distributed to family, friends and work colleagues. After reading Theatre Studies and Drama at Royal Holloway College, University of London, he spent ten years writing, directing and producing plays, publishing four one act plays in Four Truths, as well as the plays GLASS, and From Pillow To Post. In 2009, his first poetry collection was published Love, Death, and the War on Terror, followed by Keep on Keepin' On in 2012, and Grey Sun, Dark Moon in 2015. Trevor has been the editor of the international poetry anthology series The Poetic Bond since 2011 and will publish The Poetic Bond VIII in late 2018. So far, The Poetic Bond has showcased the work of 170 poets from 30 countries. Publications featuring his work include Aesthetica, Tuck, October Hill, Deep Underground, Poetry, Life and Times, Miracle, and the anthology Men in the Company of Women (EAP). Trevor is a member of The Poetry Society (UK) and formerly an executive member of The Writer's Guild of Great Britain, and treasurer of The Theatre Writers' Union. Rebecca Evans (prize-winner of The Cunningham Short Story Competition 2018) States Air Force and is a decorated Gulf War veteran. She hosts the Our Voice and Idaho Living television shows, advocating personal stories, and now mentors teens in the juvenile system. She held the title of Mrs. Idaho International and earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from Boise State University, minoring in Psychology, and was also honored with the BSU "Women Making History in Idaho" award. She was a finalist for december Magazine's 2018 Curt Johnson Prose Award. Her work has made the short list of semi-finalists for American Short Fiction's Short Story Contest, has appeared in Gravel Literary magazine, Scribes Valley Publishing's Take a Mind Trip (Anthology), and forthcoming in Fiction Southeast, and War, Literature and the Arts, among others. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing at Sierra Nevada College and serves on the editorial staff of the Sierra Nevada Review. She lives in Idaho with her three sons. The other seven finalists are; Rebekah Dodson, Tuan Phan, James Najarian, Lynne Zotalis, Tonya Walker, Karen Quinnon, and Oscar Heitmart.