Grand Prize Winner
     The Iron Bodkin
     By
Amy Allgeyer Cook

              AMY COOK was born in Florence, Kentucky on April 12 ^th.


 ^{The youngest of seven kids, she wanted to be a writer ever since she learned to make her letters face the right way.
When she was seven, her family moved to North Carolina. She graduated from NC State University with a degree in Architecture and got a job designing churches.
"Creating buildings was a lot of fun, but I always made time to write. She particularly enjoyed crafting fantasy stories. Inventing magical worlds is exciting to her and she regrets not having been born with any magic powers herself. She is also a very bad at ironing.  These days, Amy spends her time renovating historic homes and working on her next novel. She’s written five books, including the sequel to The Iron Bodkin. She lives in a hundred-year old home in Boise, Idaho with her husband and son, one cat and the oldest living Betta fish on the planet. She loves to play soccer, volleyball and tennis. Whenever possible, she travels the world. The most exotic place she’s been is Morocco, where they serve boiled sheeps-brains in open-air marketplaces. Someday, she hopes to own a little stone house in Europe …she doesn’t even care which country. She loves reading fiction and her favorite author is Susan Cooper. Amy also enjoys eating brussel sprouts, cheese and Indian food but doesn’t care much for chocolate...or sheeps-brains.}

First Prize Winner
The Undertow
By
Catalina Claussen

                 Catalina Claussen was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta 

 In eighth grade she moved to St. Augustine,  Florida and attended St. Augustine High School. She was accepted to Reed College in Portland, Oregon after her junior year in high school. She
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies. She completed herMaster of Arts degree in education at Prescott College in Prescott,  Arizona.
After graduation, she worked at La Plata Middle School for six years as  an eighth grade literature teacher. For the last four years she has  worked as a librarian and English teacher for 10th, 11th, and 12th grades at Aldo Leopold High School, a charter school for the environment and the  outdoors.  She lives in an intentional community surrounded by wilderness  and hot springs with her husband, Brenden Claussen and two children, Ajalaa and Banyan, near Silver City, New Mexico.

Second Prize Winner
Ghost Magnet
By
Linda Maclay

Honorable Mention Prize Winner

Cross
By
Scott Heydt

                         Scott Heydt grew up in suburban Philadelphia.

 He currently resides with his wife in Chalfont, Pennsylvania where he teaches fifth-grade in Central Bucks School District. A graduate of Moravian College with degrees in Elementary Education and Psychology, Heydt attributes his passion for and knowledge of writing to the great teachers who guided him in the past. His first young adult novel, O.Y.L. (Helm Publishing, 2008), is teamed with American Forests to plant a tree in the continental United States with each purchase. CROSS is Heydt’s first work of middle grade fiction.