Judges selected for Rehoboth short story contest

Six judges have been chosen to select the winning stories for the 2018 Rehoboth Beach Reads Short Story Contest, which will open Thursday, March 1. The contest, organized by Cat & Mouse Press and sponsored by Browseabout Books, invites writers to submit stories of 500-3,500 words that feature Rehoboth Beach and fit the year's theme.

The 2018 theme is Beach Fun. The first-place winner will receive $500, second place $250, and third place $100. The top 20-25 stories will appear in the anthology “Beach Fun,” which will be published by Cat & Mouse Press in November. This year's judges are: Alex Colevas, Stephanie Fowler, Tery Griffin, Laurel Marshfield, Mary Pauer and Candace Vessella.

Colevas has been a voracious reader since a young age and has spent 14 years working in the book industry. She is now the buyer and event coordinator at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach; a large part of that job is reviewing books and deciding which ones the store will carry.

Fowler attended Washington College, a small liberal arts school in Chestertown, Md., that is renowned for its writing program. There she was awarded the Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate literary award in the country. Fowler won the award for a collection of short stories based on her native roots on the Delmarva Peninsula. She was inspired to start Salt Water Media, a company designed to provide tools, products and services for indie authors. The endeavor evolved from her love of writing and her own experiences with publishing her novel, “Crossings.”

Griffin is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Major Award for fiction. She received an Individual Artist Award in Fiction from the Delaware Division of the Arts in 2010 and has twice been selected to attend the Delaware Writers Retreat. She has also been awarded a fellowship from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation to support a retreat at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recent fiction has appeared in Fifty Over Fifty, Currents: Selected Poetry & Prose from the 2014 Cape Henlopen Retreat Writers; and ninepatch: A Creative Journal for Women and Gender Studies. Griffin also runs the monthly Delaware Writing Studio Workshop Series.

Marshfield is a professional writer, ghostwriter, developmental editor and book coach who assists authors of nonfiction, fiction, memoir and biography in preparing their book manuscripts for publication. She has helped more than 400 authors shape, develop and refine their book manuscripts by offering manuscript evaluation, developmental editing, book coaching, ghostwriting and co-authorship through her editorial services for authors business, Blue Horizon Communications, which is located in Rehoboth Beach.

Pauer received her MFA in creative writing in 2010 from Stonecoast, at the University of Southern Maine. Twice the recipient of literary fellowship awards from the Delaware Division of the Arts, Pauer publishes short fiction, essays, poetry and prose locally, nationally, and internationally. She has published in The Delmarva Review, Southern Women's Review and Foxchase Review, among others. Her work can also be read in anthologies featuring Delaware writers. She judges writing nationally, as well as locally, and works with individual clients as a developmental editor. Her latest collection, Traveling Moons, is a compilation of nature writing. Donations from sales help the Kent County SPCA equine rescue center.

Vessella is president of the Friends of the Lewes Public Library and an avid reader who is passionate about libraries. She began her career as an intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired in 2009 from her position as vice president for government relations with BAE Systems Inc. In parallel with her civilian career, she served 25 years as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, retiring as a Navy captain. She received her undergraduate degree in communications from Southern Connecticut State University and her master’s in international relations and African studies from The American University in Washington, D.C. Most days she can be found at the Lewes Public Library.

The deadline for entries to the Rehoboth Beach Reads Short Story Contest is Friday, July 1. The fee is $10 per entry, and each writer can submit up to three stories. Entries are judged on creativity, quality of writing, suitability as a beach read and fit with the theme. Potential entrants are encouraged to read “How to Write Winning Short Stories” (available at local bookstores and online), and look at previous books in the series to see the kinds of stories selected in previous years. For complete contest information, go to www.catandmousepress.com.

Cat & Mouse Press was established to produce books and other materials that are fun, entertaining and of particular interest to residents and visitors to the Delmarva Region. For more information, go to www.catandmousepress.com.