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By Simmons Buntin, October 3, 2011 9:20 am

Village boys with their horse and cart, from Julian Hoffman's "Faith in a Forgotten Place," the winner of the 2nd Annual Contest in Nonfiction. Photo by Julian Hoffman.

Issue No. 28 — “Image” — features an interactive mix of literary and technical contributions, including the poetry, fiction, and nonfiction winners of our 2nd Annual Contest; our second image-filled online poetry chapbook; a new column by Elizabeth Dodd; a hypertext narrative gallery on art and the Russian landscape; and much more:

Editorials

• Guest Editorial: “Defining the City: On Being and Becoming” by Scott Doyon, Principal, PlaceMakers
• Almanac: “Red Buffalo, Black Butterflies” by Elizabeth Dodd
• Plein Air: “Home” by Deborah Fries
• Field Notes: “Casting Off, About, and Somewhere in Between” by Kathryn Miles
• Bull Hill: “The Picture of a Song Freezes the Music of Nature”by David Rothenberg, with audio
• A Stone’s Throw: “Geographies of the Interior” by Lauret Savoy

Interview

• “A Particular Species of Place-Making”
  Terrain.org Interviews Photographer Frank Gohlke, with Online Photo Gallery

To Know a Place

• “River Flying in Winter: The Sheyenne River” Essay and Audio by W. Scott Olsen, with Image Gallery of NOAA Aerial Photographs

UnSprawl Case Study

• Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, by Megan Kimble

Essays

• “Faith in a Forgotten Place” by Julian Hoffman, with Audio and Image Gallery, 2011 Nonfiction Contest Winner
• “New Orleans, The Gulf Coast, 2010” by Catherine Schmitt, with Audio and Image Gallery, 2011 Nonfiction Contest Finalist
• “Hill of the Sacred Eagles” by Katie Fallon, 2011 Nonfiction Contest Finalist
• “The Fire This Time: Down the Charles River” by David Gessner
• “Pitanga” by Eleanor Stanford, with Image Gallery
• “Swimming Among Sharks: A Photo Essay” by Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Articles

• “Playground of the Autocrats: The Russian Empire and How Terrain Shapes Society” A Hypertext Narrative Gallery by Anne Bobroff-Hajal, with Audio
• “Under the Open Sky: Poems on the Land” by Pattiann Rogers
• “Sprawl Repair: From Sprawl to Complete Communities” by Galina Tachieva
• “Disc Image: Wham-O, Frisbees, and the Modern Age of Plastic” by Susan Freinkel

ARTerrain Gallery

• “Drawing on Images ~ Paintings” by Steve Perrault

Poetry

• Rebecca Dunham : One Poem in Seven Parts with Audio : 2011 Poetry Contest Winner
• Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé : One Poem with Audio : 2011 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Gretchen Primack : One Poem with Audio : 2011 Poetry Contest Finalist
• Jeremy Frey : Big Bang: An Online Chapbook with Reactive Drawings by Ten Artists + Audio
• Barbara Rockman : Two Poems
• Karen Holmberg : Three Poems with Audio
• Rob Carney : Three Poems with Audio
• Susanna Lang : Two Poems with Audio
• Stephen Massimilla : Two Poems with Audio
• Angie Macri : Two Poems with Audio
• Melita Schaum : One Poem with Audio
• R. T. Smith : Three Poems with Audio
• Hannah Fries : Two Poems with Audio
• James Gurley : Two Poems
• Peter Kline : Two Poems with Audio
• Susan Kelly-DeWitt : Two Poems with Audio

Fiction

• “Song of the Turkey Vulture” by GE Tallant, 2011 Fiction Contest Winner
• “Driveaway” by Erica Olsen, 2011 Fiction Contest Finalist
• “Controlled Burn” by K. L. Barron, 2011 Fiction Contest Finalist
• “Kenley’s Watch” by Malka Davis, 2011 Fiction Contest Finalist
• “Diné Bikeyah (Navajo Reservation)” by Lorie Adair
• “Neighboring on the Air” by Caroline Patterson
• “Ditch Lilies” by Werner A. Low

Reviews

• “Redefining Terms, Reclaiming Place”: Oliver de la Paz reviews The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World, edited by Alison Hawthorn Deming and Lauret E. Savoy
• “Constructed Space as a Manifestation of Ideas”: Rafael Otto reviews Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State, edited by Helena Mattsson & Sven-Olov Wallenstein
• “A Symbiosis of Poem and Painting”: Derek Sheffield reviews God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World, by Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens
• “Delivering the News”: Andrew C. Gottlieb reviews Story Problems: Poems, by Rob Carney
• “Bird Conservation in the 21st Century”: Tom Leskiw reviews The American Bird Conservancy Guide to Bird Conservation, by Daniel J. Lebbin, Michael J. Parr, and George H. Fenwick

View our dynamic new issue at www.terrain.org.

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By Simmons Buntin, August 30, 2011 10:32 pm

The editors of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments are pleased to announce the winners and finalists in our 2nd Annual Contest:

Poetry
Judged by Alison Hawthorne Deming

• Winner – Rebecca Dunham for her poem in seven parts, “Morning: Joplin, MO”
• Finalist – Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé for his poem “Scholem in Forty Winged Hours”
• Finalist – Gretchen Primack for her poem “Fawn”

Of the winning poem, Alison Hawthorne Deming writes:

This poem sequence takes up the task of beginning again after the disaster of tornado and flood that hit Joplin, MO earlier this year.  Beginning requires seeing and the poem accomplishes that with acute precision and urgency as it ricochets between observation and the inward seeing of contemplation. I admire the poem’s economy and questioning in taking on the particulars of a tragedy that wounded human, plant, and creaturely communities alike. But I admire even more that the poem makes no attempt to make it all better with simplistic pieties. Rather it asks the reader to make a home in this reality–”roost, thou forsaken”– and to “let the pain remind you/ what it means to survive.”  In a world of wounds, one of poetry’s great tasks is to educate our empathy. This poem does just that at a time when empathy needs all the help it can get in the world.

Fiction
Judged by Andrew Wingfield

• Winner – G.E. Tallant for her story “Song of the Turkey Vulture”
• Finalist – Malka Davis for her story “Kenley’s Watch”
• Finalist – Erica Olsen for her story “Driveaway”
• Finalist – K.L. Barron for her story “Controlled Burn”

Of the winning story, Andrew Wingfield writes:

“Song of the Turkey Vulture” is a prose elegy to the deeply placed existence of a single woman whose small farm is the great work of her life.  Rich in details of the land and its bounty, tuned to seasonal rhythms of work and weather, this story grew up around me with the quiet majesty of a pumpkin vine.  As our small farms devolve into housing tracts, or fall prey to the factory food system, we squander not only good land, but also the habits of care that are the essence of agriculture.  Through its sharp characterizations and careful evocations of place—the sheer weight of its specifics—“Song of the Turkey Vulture” invites us to feel the gravity of our loss.  The story is mournful yet celebratory, suffused with wry humor and laced with a bitterness that’s as bracing as a mouthful of mustard greens.

Nonfiction
Judged by Elizabeth Dodd

• Winner – Julian Hoffman for his essay “Faith in a Forgotten Place”
• Finalist – Katie Fallon for her essay “Hill of the Sacred Eagles”
• Finalist – Catherine Schmitt for her essay “New Orleans, The Gulf Coast, 2010″

Of the winning essay, Elizabeth Dodd writes:

I’ve selected “Faith in a Forgotten Place” as winner of this year’s nonfiction contest.  This piece combines terrific reporting—repeated visits to the village of Zagradec, careful inclusion of historic context—with an evocative personal response, indicating how the Prespa basin has touched the author.  “And while most of Lesser Prespa Lake exists in Greece, the great bowl of open water throws an unexpected arm around an oak-clad mountain at its southern end. The hill-slopes close in, like parallel lines running together in the distance, until only a thin finger of water touches the shore, a reed-tangled wedge belonging to Albania.” This faithful presentation of the world’s body underlies the essay’s contemplation of hopes and borders, and how eco-tourism can be an opportunity for re-inhabitation by those who are not the tourists.  Richly informative, deftly reflective, this is splendid literary journalism.

All of the winners and finalists will be published in our forthcoming issue–No. 28, “Image”–which will launch on September 19th. Additionally, winners each receive a $250 prize.

Congratulations to our winners!

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By Simmons Buntin, August 24, 2010 1:56 pm

Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments is pleased to announce the finalists and winner of our inaugural nonfiction contest, judged by acclaimed writer, musician, composer, and philosopher-naturalist David Rothenberg:

• Winner: Elizabeth Dodd for “Sinuous”
• Finalist: Kelly Hayes-Raitt for “Still Alive”
• Finalist: Michael Palmer for “Kinds of Quiet”

Elizabeth Dodd beside a petroglyph in Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Photo by David Rintoul.

Here’s what Rothenberg had to say of the finalists and winner:

It has been a pleasure to read the three top entries of the nonfiction category of Terrain.org’s annual writing contest. “Still Alive” presents a haunting, gritty, honest picture of the kind of troubles and confusion the Iraq War has brought to people in the midst of it, a straight story of the kind we rarely get to hear in media-saturated America. The life of an over-caffeinated Brigham Young student in “Kinds of Quiet” who becomes a vacuum specialist is funny, dark, and painfully real in a wandering, wonderful way. But it is “Sinuous” that impresses me the most, with its movement from the direct experience of a snake-shaped petroglyph to a whole history of engagement from archeology, legend, tradition, and literature right into the moment of our attempt to look straight at an ancient image and try to make contemporary sense of it, finding the signal in the noise of history, record, and information.  It is always hard to combine writing based on raw personal experience of something mysterious and magical with all the reading we can do to offer experts’ visions of what our own encounter might actually mean. This author has combined these two elements seamlessly, so it is to this piece that I award this year’s first prize, and congratulations as well to the two fine runners-up.

Elizabeth Dodd will receive the cash prize of $250 and publication in our forthcoming issue, No. 26, with the theme of “The Signal in the Noise.” The issue launches at www.terrain.org on September 20, 2010. The issue will also include Michael Palmer’s essay.

Congratulations to Elizabeth, Michael, and Kelly Hayes-Raitt, and many thanks to those who submitted to our first contest. We had a wonderful array of essays from which to choose.

~~~

The finalists and winner of the Terrain.org inaugural contest in fiction (judged by Aurelie Sheehan) will be announced on this blog on Wednesday, and the finalists and winner of the inaugural contest in poetry (judged by Jessie Lendennie) will be announced within the next week.