Author Description

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. Revi