Celebrating Literary Arts

Engaging, encouraging & inspiring writers: Bosque Arts Center’s Third Annual Books on the Bosque Readers & Writers Convention welcomes keynote speaker Reeves, workshops, awards ceremony

CLIFTON – Part of the Bosque Arts Center’s general mission is to encourage appreciation and participation in all art forms. Their Art Classic Exhibition and Sale highlights visual arts, the Texas Troubadour highlights musical arts and Books on the Bosque highlights the literary arts.

For the third time this year, the Bosque Arts Center organized their Books on the Bosque writing contest, followed by a conference for writers and readers on Nov. 9. They also announced the contest’s award winners that afternoon.

The conference offered a valuable opportunity for writers to grow their network and hear about different styles and perspectives from other writers.

The writing contests showcased the talent and creativity from 82 entries with authors from Clifton, Whitney, Meridian, Hico, Comfort, Richardson, Temple, Comanche, Austin, Dublin, Tyler, San Marcos, Lovelady, Breckenridge, Crawford, DeLeon, Denton, and Kerrville. Out of state entries included work from Pittsburg, CA; Ithaca, NY; Buffalo, MO; and Clinton, OK.

While improving their craft and building their portfolio, thanks to the generous sponsors of the event Books on the Bosque award winners also took home cash prizes.

The writing contest features two divisions – an open division for entries from adults and a second division for high school. In the open division first place $300, second place $200 and third place $100. In the high school division first place won $275, second place $150 and third place $75.

Tarleton University’s professor of English Dr. Moamin Quazi, along with assistant professors William Jones and Jacob Brewer, were charged with assessing the entries on their merits. Besides style, diction, vocabulary and the skill to proficiently communicate an idea, a fresh and different point of view comes into play. Can a writer take an old idea and present it so that it feels new?”

“The writing was of such a quality that it was hard to pick the top ten and even harder to delineate between third and fourth place,” Quazi said. Thanks to excerpts read from the winning writings, the audience got a taste of the quality level of the work submitted to the writing contest.

Michael Mayes from Temple, Tx won third place essay with his story “You Don’t Know Jack.” That same story was deemed worthy by the judges to be the winner of the $1,000 Jones Best of the West Award, sponsored by esteemed art patrons Roland and Joyce Jones. While it was a story about a student football player, in their minds it was the most original work in any category that paid homage to the values of faith, hard work, and perseverance—the Spirit of the West— exemplified in the pioneer days through modern-day ranchers and farmers.

According to Quazi, another of Mayes’ stories “The Ballad of Baggy” came close to winning the Best of the West award as well because of its interesting juxtaposition of a jerk and bully being taught a valuable lesson in sports.

Katharyn Howd Machan from Ithaca, NY won first place Essay for “Ice,” second place short story for her “The Story of Graw” and third place for her poem “Laura Pearce; Redwing 1888.” Last year, Machan won first place poetry and the Best of the West award with her poem “Tess Clarion: Redwing 1888.”

Laura Ruth Loomis won second place with the essay “Love That Goes the Distance.” In 2023, the Pittsburg, CA-native Loomis won first place Short Story.

First place Poetry went to Carol Thompson for her poem “The River of the Arms of God.” Yvonne Carpenter from Clinton, OK won second place in Poetry with her poem “My Trail at Eighty.”

First place Short Story went to Miles Wilson’s “HOA.” Clifton author Virginia Richards won third place Short Story with her story “Wooden Spoon,” about her ancestors coming to Norse.

Other finalists included DaLinda Ackerman, Theo Boyd, Yvonne Carpenter, Tessa Chenoa, Laquita Dettman, Linda Fyke, Keith Goedecke, Lucy Griffith, Marie Halapin, Rita M. Huie, Machan, Betty Lynne McCarthy, Jackie Melvin, Lauren Oertel, Gage Parker, Candace Smith, Marion Surles, Carol Thompson, Miles Wilson, Johnny L. Wooten.

In the high school division, Dakota Vaughn won first place in the poetry category with her poem “In The Arena.” Shea O'Reilly won second place with her poem “Reminiscence of Song.” And Madison Otter won third place with her poem “Shrinking Giant.”

Jayden Nickel won first prize in the prose category for her short story “A Tear on the Bonnet.” Jaime Lamus placed second with his short story “The Change of a Man,” and Cheyenne Thiele won third place with her short story “My Time In Between Time.”

All of these winners attend Clifton High School and are sophomores taught by English teacher Brett Voss. Other students making the top 10 in the High School division in this year’s writing contest were Courtney Baccus, Kaitlyn Baker, Kamen Baker, Ruthie Ball, Sterling Cloer, Reese Finney, Will Goolsby, Scarlett Kennedy, Tulah Paschal, Kelsey Rodriquez, Violet Rodriquez, Taelyn Price and Reed Willmann

With the motto, you’re never too old to write a novel, the BOTB conference keynote speaker Virginia “Jennie,” Reeves spoke about her newly published debut novel “Once in the Blue Moon.” The book was inspired by her family stories, setting her up for a life’s course of hard work, endless energy and passion as a teacher, mother and Park Cities socialite.

Texas-based author Reeves was born and raised on a cotton farm in Oklahoma. She married Stuart, the boy she met at 14 after leaving that farm. Set in 1940s Oklahoma on a red dirt cotton farm, the novel is “grounded in the realities of life near the end of the World War II. A tale of willpower in ordinary people who act with courage and grit, this story is ultimately one of resilience, forgiveness and redemption.”

During the conference, Reeves spoke about the writing process complete with black and white family photos and her collaboration with Kyle Hobratschk’s who made the book’s illustrations.

Texas author Mark A. Daniel – who specializes in Stephen King-like suspense, horror, and thriller genres – offered his insights in developing characters. Taking the advice of his third-grade teacher to “pursue writing of some kind as a career,” he promptly wrote his first book “From Six Feet to Two Inches.” It was about 10 pages long. He never looked back.

Since then, Daniels has completed seven novels – including “The Gifted,” “Burial Ground,” “The Threshold” and “Black Mass” --and two short story collections “Razor’s Edge, part one and two”. He lives on 73 acres in rural west Texas in the Cross Plains area with his wife of 25 years, a few dogs, several cats, and a varying number of chickens. Daniels will be presenting a mini writers workshop.

Always her creative outlet, Clifton High School senior Sophia Neumann wants to take her writing more seriously. She had wanted to enter a short story, but ran out of time, and decided to come to the conference instead and pick up some pointers.

Award-winning poet, songwriter, journalist and rural Central Texas-native Tony Burnett offered an interactive workshop entitled “Aerobic Plot Development,” in which the attendees came up with an improvised story. This technique of free association can be helpful when a writer feels stuck. Burnett’s advice was to always write something, because just the act of thinking and writing while being a detour from the task at hand, might give inspiration or jolt the brain back to the story.

Clifton’s Gage Parker, who started writing poetry during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that an interesting exercise he might utilize in the future when he feels stuck.

Burnett has had work published in over 40 international literary magazines including Short Story America, Midwest Review, and Equinox. He has served as board president of the Writer’s League of Texas and is currently the managing Books on the Bosque Literary Festival editor and CEO of Kallisto Gaia Press. His publications include a short story collection “Southern Gentleman,” a book of poetry titled “The Reckless Hope of Scoundrels,” and his most recent debut novel, a psychological thriller “Watermelon Tattoo,” winner of the Water Tower Press Novel Prize.