25 February 2020

Anthology to Celebrate Darron L. Wright Awards

Editors of Chicago-based non-profit literary journal Line of Advance have announced a forthcoming print and e-book anthology will collect the winning entries from the first five years (2016-2020) of the annual Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards.

The awards annually recognize excellence in prose and poetry by U.S. military service members and veterans. Cash prizes of $250, $150, and $100 are available in each category.

“The Line of Advance proudly serves as a leading venue for the best of ‘veterans-lit,’ with works by men and women who have served in all uniforms and in all eras,” says the journal’s editor-in-chief Christopher Lyke, who will also edit the anthology. “We are also grateful to the underwriters of our cash prizes, who, through their generosity, help promote creatively crafted veterans’ stories to wider audiences.”

This year’s Darron L. Wright award finalists will be included in the anthology. Submissions for the 2020 Darron L. Wright awards open May 1, 2020 and close May 31, 2020. Winners will be notified not later than Aug. 31, 2020. More details are forthcoming.

The projected release date for “Line of Advance: A Celebration of Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards Finalists, 2016-2020” is Oct. 13, 2020.

Administered by the journal since 2016, and underwritten by the Blake and Bailey Foundation, the awards commemorate a U.S. Army leader and author who was killed in a September 2013 parachute training accident. Darron L. Wright, 45, had deployed three times to Iraq, and was author of a 2012 memoir “Iraq Full Circle: From Shock and Awe to the Last Combat Patrol in Baghdad and Beyond.”

Middle West Press LLC is a Johnston, Iowa-based editor and publisher of non-fiction, fiction, journalism, and poetry, with projects that feature the unique voices of the American Midwest. As an independent micro-press, we publish one to four titles annually. The Line of Advance Darron L. Wright Awards anthology will be the sixth of our titles involving war and military themes.