Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award Donations
Click here to donate today.
One hundred percent of proceeds will be dedicated to the Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award Fund.
Donations of $2 or $5 are recommended, although no preference will be given to writers based on their donation. Writer’s Relief will match donations up to $5,000 for current and future awards.
Dear Writer’s Relief,
I’ll always be grateful to you for the self-confidence gifted to me with the Peter Hixson win. It’s been a lovely journey, and I’m grateful to have shared it with you and learned from you.
Sending a hug,
Barbara Cockrell, 2012 Peter K. Hixson Award Winner
Dear Writer’s Relief,
The most important thing I learned was how competitive the “po biz” is. I had no idea that it took so many submissions to get one acceptance! I think—no, I know—that without having won the Hixson Memorial Award, I would have given up on publishing any of my poems, and maybe I would have stopped writing them too.
To go along with that last thought, I learned that people other than my friends appreciated and were moved by my poetry. This was so important, and it’s this that I will hold on to as I go off on my own, as it were, to face a million more rejections.
I also learned a crucial PROCESS for submitting poetry. That is, don’t be haphazard; make yourself a spreadsheet; submit in bunches of 25 or 30 at a time. I would never have done that in the past. Prior to winning the Hixson award, I would have tossed a few poems here and tossed a few poems there and thought it luck if they landed in fertile soil.
Finally, I learned that I’m not, in fact, the Queen of Proofreading. Your proofreaders had a few tricks up their sleeves that I never bothered to learn (despite the fact that I’ve taught college-level composition for over twenty years), and now I’m going to bother to learn them.
Please give Ronnie my best regards. And tell the Hixson family that I am forever grateful for the award.
Laura Wendorff, 2012 Peter K. Hixson Award Winner. Work accepted into Foliate Oak, Forge, The Minetta Review, and Sanskrit.
Thank you so much for supporting our efforts to assist creative writers.
Ronnie L. Smith, President
Writer’s Relief
