2024 Winners

Kara Kinney Cartwright

Kara Kinney Cartwright

Kara Kinney Cartwright is a legal editor by day, but her superpower is punchy humor about unwritten social rules. Her first book, Suburban Haiku: Poetic Dispatches from Behind the Picket Fence, was published for reluctant soccer moms under the pen name Peyton Price. Her second book, a last lecture for teenage boys entitled, Just Don’t Be An Assh*le: A Surprisingly Necessary Guide to Being a Good Guy, was published in March 2020.  (You were probably too busy disinfecting your groceries to notice.) Her work has appeared on the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop’s blog, Redbook, Scary Mommy, Grown & Flown, Huffington Post, NickMom, Babble, Lifetime Moms, Blunt Moms and others. She’s the mother of two adult(ish) sons, who describe their dear mother’s personal brand as “Do the right thing, but act like a jerk about it.”

Annmarie Kelly-Harbaugh

Annmarie Kelly-Harbaugh is the author of Here Be Dragons: A Parent’s Guide, a memoir about the wonderful misery of raising children with someone you love. She is also the host of Wild Precious Life, a literary podcast about making the most of the time we have. Annmarie teaches at Ashland University, and her essays have appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered, in Today ParentingThe Black Fork ReviewThe Gordon Square ReviewAnodyneHuffington Post  and the New York Observer. In her non-writing moments, Annmarie loves kickboxing, karaoke, hound dogs, ping-pong, books that make her laugh, movies that make her cry and salads other people make her eat. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she is currently querying a novel about all the truth in the lies we tell.