Podcast: The Venus Pen
Gertrude Johnson Williams Fiction Conest Winner
2009-06-23

The Venus Pen
The Gertrude Johnson Williams Fiction Contest Winner
The Venus Pen by Tanya Hodges
 
 
Editor’s Note:
 
Late last fall, EbonyJet.com announced the online only re-launch of the popular Gertrude Johnson Williams Short Story Fiction Competition, a project initially started in 1990 by JPC’s founder, John H. Johnson.  The competition was named in tribute to Mr. Johnson’s mother, Gertrude Johnson Williams, an avid fan of reading and supporter of the literary arts.
 
The response was, in a word, overwhelming. Hundreds of entries streamed in within hours of announcing the contest, with the bulk showing up just prior to the final deadline.
The dirty little secret of contest judging is that you pay a lot of attention to the first few entries
 
 
In the past, a small group of noted judges made an initial cut from the entries, and the editors of Ebony selected the final winners. This time we decided to reverse the process. Eric Easter and Terry Glover of EbonyJet.com made the preliminary cuts to the semi-finalist round, and a team of star authors including mystery writer Walter Mosley, novelist Trey Ellis, author Sandra Jackson-Opoku and Ebony senior writer Joy Bennett (daughter of Lerone Bennett, Jr.) scored the final selections.
 
The final competition was tight, with only fractions of a score separating the final winner from the five finalists. But in the end the story with the highest score was The Venus Pen, by Alabama amateur writer and substitute teacher, Tanya Hodges.
 
The text of the story appears in the July issue of Ebony Magazine, currently on newsstands. For EbonyJet.com, we asked Chicago artist, actor and Columbia College professor, Claudette Roper, to record the winning entry as a podcast.
 
 
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