The New Feathers Award
January 1, 2024
2023 New Feathers Award Winner
Happy New Year to all the friends of New Feathers Anthology. We hope 2024 is full of happiness and the joy of creative work.
Every New Year’s Day, we announce the winner of the New Feathers Award, our chance to honor one artist whose work stood out for us in the last year. In the years since we started our journal, the winners have been very diverse, a poem, a short story, and a painting, with writers and artists from the US, Australia, and Turkey. This year continues that tradition.
I’m pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 New Feathers Award is Elena Kostenko, for her video essay Grounding, a lyrical, lovely work on the creative process.
The first runner up is Karen Schnurstein, for her poem “The Phone Call,” one of two of her poems we published in the summer issue of New Feathers.
The second runner up is Maria Golosnaya, for the painting Three, which we used for the cover of the spring 2023 issue, one of three paintings by her we published in that issue.
Thank you to everyone who contributed your work to New Feathers in the last year. It was a pleasure and honor to publish it. We hope that the next year is a good one.
The New Feathers editorial staff
December 19, 2023
2023 New Feathers Award Nominees
The purpose of the New Feathers Anthology and New Feathers award is to promote art and artists. The New Feathers Award acknowledges work that we thought stood out for us during the year. It is extremely difficult to choose the nominees, as all of the work we publish we consider work of quality and excellence. We want to thank and honor all of you for sharing your work. Please join us in congratulating this year’s nominees.
Deborah DeNicola, Sugar and Butter
Maria Golosnaya, Three
Yannah Guda, Talking to Yourself, Tenderly
Veronika Hilská, Seagulls 1
Elena Kostenko, Grounding
Anna Melnikova, Memories of Lost Love 2
Daniel Espinosa Ponce, Grumpy Alebrije
Pamela Richardson, If Only There Were a Butterfly Net for Catching
Karen Schnurstein, The Phone Call
Diane Webster, Trapped
Mike Wilson, Today Is My New TV
January 1, 2023
2022 New Feathers Award Winner
Happy New Year. We are pleased to announce that the 2022 New Feathers Award winner is Sue Brennan, for her short story “Junk,” from the summer 2022 issue of New Feathers. Her story is a humane and beautifully written portrait of Ruth, an aging Australian woman, told through her interior monologue as she cleans out her house on a long weekend alone.
Sue Brennan is an Australian writer with stories published in Australia in ACE: Arresting Contemporary Stories by Emerging Writers, Meniscus, Meanjin, Better Read Than Dead Writing Anthology and in the USA in the Peauxdunque Review, Backchannels and Big City Lit.
The first runner up is Ena Gilih, for her painting Corpus Anima, from the spring 2022 issue of New Feathers. We also published two other paintings by Gilih in our spring issue, Out of the Frame and Autopija. Her works use a realist style to play with the identity of the artist, artistic tropes, and the boundaries of art. In Corpus Anima, the artist places herself within an iconic religious image. As editor Brian Dickson said, “Corpus Anima has that wonderful echo of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, in addition to echoing ideas of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.”
Ena Gilih was born in Zagreb in 1993. She has been living in Osijek since birth, where in 2012 she finished gymnasium. In 2013 she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Osijek. During her studies, she participated in various public art projects and exhibitions. She spent two semesters at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku). In 2019, she completed the University graduate study “Art Culture” module Painting at the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek. The diploma thesis, entitled "Corpus Anima," was realized under the mentorship of Assoc. Dr. Art. Ines Matijević Cakić (Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek) and Prof. Dr. Art. Piotr Józefowicz (Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk). Gilih has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. In 2021, she became a member of Croatian Society of Fine Artists Osijek.
The second runner up is Gale Acuff, for his poem “Disruptive,” in the winter 2022 issue of New Feathers. “Disruptive” is a humorous and playful exploration of a child’s view of religion. John O’Leary said of it that he admired it “Not simply because of the subject matter, but for the musicality of the poem, the voice, and the very funny ending, which is rare.”
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in New Feathers Anthology 2021, Ascent, Reed, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, The Font, Chiron Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Arkansas Review, Maryland Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, War, Literature & the Arts, and many other journals. He has also taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.
Congratulations again to the winner and runner’s up. It is an honor to share your work. Here’s hoping for a year of peace, prosperity, and creativity.
The New Feathers editorial staff
December 22, 2023
2022 New Feathers Award Nominees
We see New Feathers as a way to promote and encourage art and artists, and as part of that, each year, the editors select works from artists they want to further encourage, and from them we select the winner of the New Feathers Award, a small ($300) cash award. I hope the award will give the winner a needed boost. All the artists we published this year are worthy of our support, but here are this year’s nominees. Congratulations to all of you.
Spring
Corpus Anima
Art by Ena Gilih
What She Told Me Before
Poetry by Aimée Keeble
Summer
Broken Melodies, Singing Walls
Fiction by Hiba Heba
Junk
Fiction by Sue Brennan
Ghosts
Poetry by Joseph Mills
Winter
My Dreams
Art by Ayhan Özer
Disruptive
Poetry by Gale Acuff
Time Gradient
Music by Akari Komura
January 1, 2022
2021 New Feathers Award Winner
Happy new year to all of you. We had many fine works to choose from in selecting the New Feathers Award recipient this year, and the decision was very difficult. The winner of the 2021 New Feathers Award, however, is the visual artist Berna Özlem Özcan, for Vanishing Garden. She was a clear favorite among the judges. Other than her winning artwork, we also used her piece Nomads for the cover of the winter 2021 issue and another work, Doubtful Minds, as an illustration in the winter issue. I would like to quote John O’Leary, who said of her work that it has a “stunning, tragic, beauty . . . a clear theme, but still sublime.” Thank you for your work and congratulations to Berna Özlem Özcan.
For the runners up, we selected two poets.
The first runner up was the poet Hiba Heba, with her poem from our summer issue, “Morning Prayer.”
Second runner up was Kristy Nielsen, with her poem from the winter issue, “Introducing the Wounded.”
Thank you to all the nominees and all the contributors to New Feathers Anthology for sharing your wonderful work with us in the past year. We hope you have a happy and productive new year.
December 19, 2021
2021 New Feathers Award Nominees
The original idea for New Feathers Anthology was to promote and support art and artists. As such, anyone included in the journal was someone we thought of as worthy of support. However, to give extra support and encouragement, we also created the New Feathers Award, to be given at the end of the year to one contributor to New Feathers. Originally, we had intended to use the profits from donations and from sales of the print anthology, after the costs of running the journal and producing the anthology, as the award money for the prize. So far, however, there are no profits, but we still would like to give a cash prize of $300 to the winner of the award. I like to imagine that we are giving encouragement to an artist when they need it, and the cash prize might help in a small way, to help buy supplies or a groceries, to throw a party, or to be spent in any way the artist pleases.
Each of our editors selected three contributors to be nominees for the final award. I know that there were many more that we could have selected. We had many great works this year, and I want to thank all the contributors for allowing us to use their works. From the nine nominees, Caroline, John, and I will select the final award winner, and the winner will be announced on New Year’s Day.
The 2021 New Feathers Award nominees are (in no particular order)
Maria Berardi, “Interior Castle”
Ruth Moss, “the dearest freshness deep down things”
Carl Scharwath, Marina
Berna Özlem Özcan, Vanishing Garden
Miles Hitchcock, “Wild Fruit”
Samar Barakat, “Rosemary Church”
Hiba Heba, “Morning Prayer”
Kristy Nielsen, “Introducing the Wounded”
Carys Crossen, "Cherenkov's Light"
January 1, 2021
2020 Award Winner
Happy New Year. It is a great pleasure to announce this year's award winner. We had many outstanding works of art this year, and many great nominees. In the end, we agreed that Elizabeth Harmatys Park's "38th and Chicago" deserved the award. Her poem is a powerful and bold expression of the hardships of life, of community, and the outrage felt at the death of George Floyd, not only a beautiful poem but an appropriate selection for the year 2020. Congratulations.
January 1, 2024
2023 New Feathers Award Winner
Happy New Year to all the friends of New Feathers Anthology. We hope 2024 is full of happiness and the joy of creative work.
Every New Year’s Day, we announce the winner of the New Feathers Award, our chance to honor one artist whose work stood out for us in the last year. In the years since we started our journal, the winners have been very diverse, a poem, a short story, and a painting, with writers and artists from the US, Australia, and Turkey. This year continues that tradition.
I’m pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 New Feathers Award is Elena Kostenko, for her video essay Grounding, a lyrical, lovely work on the creative process.
The first runner up is Karen Schnurstein, for her poem “The Phone Call,” one of two of her poems we published in the summer issue of New Feathers.
The second runner up is Maria Golosnaya, for the painting Three, which we used for the cover of the spring 2023 issue, one of three paintings by her we published in that issue.
Thank you to everyone who contributed your work to New Feathers in the last year. It was a pleasure and honor to publish it. We hope that the next year is a good one.
The New Feathers editorial staff
December 19, 2023
2023 New Feathers Award Nominees
The purpose of the New Feathers Anthology and New Feathers award is to promote art and artists. The New Feathers Award acknowledges work that we thought stood out for us during the year. It is extremely difficult to choose the nominees, as all of the work we publish we consider work of quality and excellence. We want to thank and honor all of you for sharing your work. Please join us in congratulating this year’s nominees.
Deborah DeNicola, Sugar and Butter
Maria Golosnaya, Three
Yannah Guda, Talking to Yourself, Tenderly
Veronika Hilská, Seagulls 1
Elena Kostenko, Grounding
Anna Melnikova, Memories of Lost Love 2
Daniel Espinosa Ponce, Grumpy Alebrije
Pamela Richardson, If Only There Were a Butterfly Net for Catching
Karen Schnurstein, The Phone Call
Diane Webster, Trapped
Mike Wilson, Today Is My New TV
January 1, 2023
2022 New Feathers Award Winner
Happy New Year. We are pleased to announce that the 2022 New Feathers Award winner is Sue Brennan, for her short story “Junk,” from the summer 2022 issue of New Feathers. Her story is a humane and beautifully written portrait of Ruth, an aging Australian woman, told through her interior monologue as she cleans out her house on a long weekend alone.
Sue Brennan is an Australian writer with stories published in Australia in ACE: Arresting Contemporary Stories by Emerging Writers, Meniscus, Meanjin, Better Read Than Dead Writing Anthology and in the USA in the Peauxdunque Review, Backchannels and Big City Lit.
The first runner up is Ena Gilih, for her painting Corpus Anima, from the spring 2022 issue of New Feathers. We also published two other paintings by Gilih in our spring issue, Out of the Frame and Autopija. Her works use a realist style to play with the identity of the artist, artistic tropes, and the boundaries of art. In Corpus Anima, the artist places herself within an iconic religious image. As editor Brian Dickson said, “Corpus Anima has that wonderful echo of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, in addition to echoing ideas of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.”
Ena Gilih was born in Zagreb in 1993. She has been living in Osijek since birth, where in 2012 she finished gymnasium. In 2013 she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Osijek. During her studies, she participated in various public art projects and exhibitions. She spent two semesters at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku). In 2019, she completed the University graduate study “Art Culture” module Painting at the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek. The diploma thesis, entitled "Corpus Anima," was realized under the mentorship of Assoc. Dr. Art. Ines Matijević Cakić (Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek) and Prof. Dr. Art. Piotr Józefowicz (Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk). Gilih has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. In 2021, she became a member of Croatian Society of Fine Artists Osijek.
The second runner up is Gale Acuff, for his poem “Disruptive,” in the winter 2022 issue of New Feathers. “Disruptive” is a humorous and playful exploration of a child’s view of religion. John O’Leary said of it that he admired it “Not simply because of the subject matter, but for the musicality of the poem, the voice, and the very funny ending, which is rare.”
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in New Feathers Anthology 2021, Ascent, Reed, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, The Font, Chiron Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Arkansas Review, Maryland Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, War, Literature & the Arts, and many other journals. He has also taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.
Congratulations again to the winner and runner’s up. It is an honor to share your work. Here’s hoping for a year of peace, prosperity, and creativity.
The New Feathers editorial staff
December 22, 2023
2022 New Feathers Award Nominees
We see New Feathers as a way to promote and encourage art and artists, and as part of that, each year, the editors select works from artists they want to further encourage, and from them we select the winner of the New Feathers Award, a small ($300) cash award. I hope the award will give the winner a needed boost. All the artists we published this year are worthy of our support, but here are this year’s nominees. Congratulations to all of you.
Spring
Corpus Anima
Art by Ena Gilih
What She Told Me Before
Poetry by Aimée Keeble
Summer
Broken Melodies, Singing Walls
Fiction by Hiba Heba
Junk
Fiction by Sue Brennan
Ghosts
Poetry by Joseph Mills
Winter
My Dreams
Art by Ayhan Özer
Disruptive
Poetry by Gale Acuff
Time Gradient
Music by Akari Komura
January 1, 2022
2021 New Feathers Award Winner
Happy new year to all of you. We had many fine works to choose from in selecting the New Feathers Award recipient this year, and the decision was very difficult. The winner of the 2021 New Feathers Award, however, is the visual artist Berna Özlem Özcan, for Vanishing Garden. She was a clear favorite among the judges. Other than her winning artwork, we also used her piece Nomads for the cover of the winter 2021 issue and another work, Doubtful Minds, as an illustration in the winter issue. I would like to quote John O’Leary, who said of her work that it has a “stunning, tragic, beauty . . . a clear theme, but still sublime.” Thank you for your work and congratulations to Berna Özlem Özcan.
For the runners up, we selected two poets.
The first runner up was the poet Hiba Heba, with her poem from our summer issue, “Morning Prayer.”
Second runner up was Kristy Nielsen, with her poem from the winter issue, “Introducing the Wounded.”
Thank you to all the nominees and all the contributors to New Feathers Anthology for sharing your wonderful work with us in the past year. We hope you have a happy and productive new year.
December 19, 2021
2021 New Feathers Award Nominees
The original idea for New Feathers Anthology was to promote and support art and artists. As such, anyone included in the journal was someone we thought of as worthy of support. However, to give extra support and encouragement, we also created the New Feathers Award, to be given at the end of the year to one contributor to New Feathers. Originally, we had intended to use the profits from donations and from sales of the print anthology, after the costs of running the journal and producing the anthology, as the award money for the prize. So far, however, there are no profits, but we still would like to give a cash prize of $300 to the winner of the award. I like to imagine that we are giving encouragement to an artist when they need it, and the cash prize might help in a small way, to help buy supplies or a groceries, to throw a party, or to be spent in any way the artist pleases.
Each of our editors selected three contributors to be nominees for the final award. I know that there were many more that we could have selected. We had many great works this year, and I want to thank all the contributors for allowing us to use their works. From the nine nominees, Caroline, John, and I will select the final award winner, and the winner will be announced on New Year’s Day.
The 2021 New Feathers Award nominees are (in no particular order)
Maria Berardi, “Interior Castle”
Ruth Moss, “the dearest freshness deep down things”
Carl Scharwath, Marina
Berna Özlem Özcan, Vanishing Garden
Miles Hitchcock, “Wild Fruit”
Samar Barakat, “Rosemary Church”
Hiba Heba, “Morning Prayer”
Kristy Nielsen, “Introducing the Wounded”
Carys Crossen, "Cherenkov's Light"
January 1, 2021
2020 Award Winner
Happy New Year. It is a great pleasure to announce this year's award winner. We had many outstanding works of art this year, and many great nominees. In the end, we agreed that Elizabeth Harmatys Park's "38th and Chicago" deserved the award. Her poem is a powerful and bold expression of the hardships of life, of community, and the outrage felt at the death of George Floyd, not only a beautiful poem but an appropriate selection for the year 2020. Congratulations.