Lewes Library names creative writing award winner

The Lewes Public Library recently announced that Susan Towers of Lewes is the winner of the Florence Coltman Award affiliated with the library’s forthcoming anthology of creative writing, “No Place like Here: an Anthology of Southern Delaware Poetry & Prose,” to be published later this year.

Towers received $100 and an award certificate, and her essay, “At Rainbow’s End,” will be published in the anthology. The anthology celebrates the unique beauty and quirky flavor of Delaware’s southern area, and sales will benefit the Friends of Lewes Public Library. The award was presented at the Third Annual Lewes Creative Artists Workshop held recently at the library.

Towers is a public-relations specialist at Beebe Medical Center and the writer/editor of the Beacon, Beebe’s quarterly magazine. She has more than 25 years’ experience as a journalist and freelance writer, and has lived and traveled in Europe and Asia. Her stories have appeared in the Bakersfield Californian, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, as well as the Hendon Times of London, England, and the Straits Times of the Republic of Singapore.

She has won several awards including a Special Recognition Award in 1994 from the Kern County Farm Bureau for dedicated service to agriculture through special understanding and reporting, and in 1995 the George F. Gruner Prize from the McClatchy Newspaper Organization for Meritorious Public Service in Journalism. In 1995 she was a finalist in the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Awards.

Towers is pursuing a master’s degree in biomedical writing at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, and is working on her first novel, “Black Market Baby.”