Becky Mushko

  Jack's Mountain

Some of Becky Mushko's First-Place Writing Awards:

• 2007 Virginia Writers Club "Back Page" Contest (Essay): "Crit Group"
• 2007 Virginia Writers Club Golden Nib Contest (Fiction): "HotGuy16"
• 2005 Lonesome Pine Short Story Contest: "The Spirit of Giving"
• 2004 Lonesome Pine Short Story Contest: "The Roadhunter"
• 2002 Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest: "Burning Bridges"
• 2002 Traveler Chapter of VWC Writing Contest (fiction): "Miracle of the Concrete Jesus"
• Winner—2001 Smith Mountain Arts Council Fiction Contest (SMAC underwrote part of the first press run for self-publishing Patches on the Same Quilt)
• 2001 Wytheville Chautauqua Literary Contest: Short Story: "Insult to Injury"
• 1999 Lonesome Pine Short Story Contest: "Spelldown"
• 1998 Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest: "Everybody's Business"
• 1996 Lonesome Pine Short Story Contest: "You Ain't Buck-Nekkid & You Got Enough to Eat"
• 1996 Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest: "Rest in Peace"
• 1994 Lonesome Pine Short Story Contest: "The Girl Who Raced Mules"

A recent second place:

• 2009 Wytheville Chautauqua Literary Contest (Short Story): "Rat Killing"

Three noteworthy writing achievements:

• Runner-up—2009 Smith Mountain Arts Council Unpublished Novel Contest (My manuscript Stuck was the only kid-lit in the group)
• 1996-97 Pushcart Prize Nomination—Oct. 1996 by THEMA for "Angel On Ice"
• Finalist—1995 Roanoke Times Christmas Memory Short Story Contest: "The Magi Strike Back"

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Awards:

Winner: "Worst Western" division of the 1996 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest:

Following the unfortunate bucking of his horse when it was startled by the posse's shots, Tex--who now lay in a disheveled heap in the sagebrush--pushed back his sweat-stained Stetson from one deep-set eye, spat a stream of tobacco juice at the nearest cactus, and reflected momentarily that the men approaching him with ropes probably weren't just out for a skip, and--if they were--his freshly broken ankle would have to cause him to decline any entreaties to join them.

The above dreadful sentence (and four others of mine, including my 1999 "Dishonorable Mention") appear in It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (Friday Publishing, 2008).

 Winner: "Vile Pun" division of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest:

Vowing to get revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas. 

"Dishonorable" Mention: in the 1999 Bulwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Contest:

"Well, Mummy," replied little Felicity in response to her mother's chiding, "I know for a fact you are lying to me and that I was not left on the doorstep by gypsies, as you are fond of telling me, for gypsies are not in the habit of abandoning infants on the twentieth floor of New York apartment houses, and furthermore there is absolutely no room on the street for them to park their horse and wagon, so--when you are old and in need of custodial care--we shall then see who has the last laugh as I abandon you in a substandard adult care facility."