Wyoming Arts Council

2024 Blanchan and Doubleday Writing Award Winners Announced

Featured News | May 3, 2024

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Cady Favazzo and Callie Plaxco, both of Laramie, are the recipients of the Wyoming Arts Council’s 2024 Frank Nelson Doubleday and Neltje Blanchan Writing Awards.

Cady Favazzo received the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award for the entry, “Even Parts I Promised Myself.” This award is given for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script written by a woman writer. Honorable mentions were awarded to Reatha Thomas Oakley of Gillette and Callie Plaxco of Laramie for the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award. 

Favazzo is a poet and teacher from Rock Springs, Wyoming. She earned her MFA from the University of Idaho. Her recent work can be found published in “Nimrod,” “Cimarron Review,” “Phoebe” and elsewhere.

Callie Plaxco won the Neltje Blanchan Writing Award for the entry, “I Gather in the Tree Tops to Sing and Stare Wildly at the Dark Sky.” The award is given annually for the best poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or script informed by a relationship with the natural world. Renee Meador of Sheridan and William Owens of Lander received honorable mentions for the Neltje Blanchan Writing Award.

As her grandmother once said, Callie Plaxco flew the coop when she left South Carolina to journey west to the University of Wyoming for her MFA in Creative Writing. Still in Wyoming, Callie lives with her husband, two small boys, and two big dogs. She works as a Youth Services Specialist at the Albany County Public Library where she enjoys reading to young children and getting lost in the shelves of picture books. Her chapbook, “Dear Person” is available at Dancing Girl Press and individual poems have appeared in “Carve Magazine,” “Tinderbox,” “Gingerbread House,” and “Sugar House Review.”

The Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award and the Neltje Blanchan Writing Award are made possible through the generosity of a private donor and are administered by the Wyoming Arts Council. Both awards are designed to bring attention to writers in Wyoming who have not yet received wide recognition for their work, and to support emerging writers at crucial times in their careers. The juror for this year was Karen Auvinen.

For more information, visit the Arts Council website wyomingartscouncil.org or contact Kimberly Mittelstadt, Creative Arts Specialist, at 307-274-6673 or kimberly.mittelstadt@wyo.gov.

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