WRITING CONTEST SUCCESS STORIES
IF QUIET toil is the bread and butter of the writing life, then winning a writing contest is its three-scoop sundae with nuts, hot fudge, and a cherry. Coming in first, rising to the top: These notions feel distant to the arduous work of crafting poetry and prose, tasks undertaken in solitude and likely without much thought of competition. (The desire to be published before that pretentious jerk in your workshop notwithstanding.) But in a field known for its inevitable gauntlet of rejection, where opinions are subjective (but binding!) and the market is fickle, it can feel awfully good to be praised so definitively.
Writers of course hope that the practical outcomes of such wins will be significant—that winning will increase their prestige, platform, and visibility, offering. Her wrenchingly candid piece, about grieving the loss of her sister and the role of social media in modern mourning, was quickly noticed by a flood of agents, who approached Leddy in hopes of helping her expand the essay into a book-length manuscript. Within a year Leddy had sold a memoir, , which was published by Harper in March.
