For the 2nd year in a row, William Thrift has placed 2nd Runner-up in the prestigious Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s 2012 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. William’s latest short story, And the Sun Sets on Walker Street, reveals a child-advocate in peril from the
neighborhood thug as told by several of the denizens of Walker Street. The story is modeled after people, places, and events that William observed while living in Atlanta’s in-town Kirkwood neighborhood. Another of William’s recent short stories, The Dead and the Living, was given an Honorable Mention in the 2012 South Carolina Writers’ Workshop Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards contest. A graduate of the University of South Carolina, William has traveled extensively in the US and abroad. After serving many years as a corporate regional manager for a private business, his creative side has emerged. In addition to writing a novel and producing short fiction, he has been published in The Petigru Review and is the editor (and a contributing writer) for Columbia Home & Garden magazine. Spare time consists of songwriting, dabbling in creative cuisine, and serving as Secretary for the Historic Cottontown Neighborhood in Columbia, SC.
James D. McCallister has won 2nd place in this year’s Carrie McCray Literary Memorial Awards’ Novel-First Chapter competition for his novel, Fellow Traveler. The competition is sponsored by the South Carolina Writers’ Workshop. James has worked as a media archivist, newspaper columnist, free-lance journalist, and small business owner. His fiction publications include two novels: King’s Highway (Red Letter Press, 2007) and Fellow Traveler (Muddy Ford Press, 2012). A two-time South Carolina Writers’ Workshop and SC Fiction Project awardee as well as a 2012 Faulkner-Wisdom finalist, McCallister has appeared at the SC Book Festival as a featured author and moderator, and teaches creative writing at Midlands Technical College. A lifelong South Carolinian, he lives with his wife Jenn and their beloved brood of a dozen cats, muses all.