The John D. Voelker Foundation and the American Museum of Fly Fishing (AMFF) are pleased to announce the 2020 Robert Traver Fly Fishing Writing Award (the Traver Award). The Award is named after Robert Traver, pen name for the late John Voelker, author of Trout Madness, Trout Magic, Anatomy of a Fisherman, the fine historical novel Laughing Whitefish, and the 1958 best seller Anatomy of a Murder.
The Traver Award was created in 1994 by Nick Lyons and the Voelker Foundation to encourage and recognize “distinguished original stories or essays that embody the implicit love of fly-fishing, respect for the sport and the natural world in which it takes place.”The Traver stories and essays must demonstrate high literary values in one or more of these three categories:
A. The joy of fly-fishing: personal and philosophic
B. Ecology: knowledge and protection of the natural world
C. Humor: piscatorial friendships and fun on the water.
$2,500 Prize
The 2020 Traver Award will be granted for the winning short work of fiction or non-fiction essay in the English language, not previously published commercially in print or digital media.“Short work” means 3,000 words or less. A fee of $25 per entry will offset the administrative costs of the Award program. Previous Traver Award winners are not eligible. Writers must submit an Entry Form, upload a PDF file of the Traver Award entry, and submit a fee of $25 per entry on the Voelker Foundation website www.voelkerfoundation.com by midnight on May 1, 2020. Additional submission requirements and instructions are on the Voelker Foundation website.
The 2020 Traver Award winner will be announced in September 2020. The winning entry will be published in the Spring 2021 edition of The American Fly Fisher – Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. The 2019 Traver Award competition drew a field of 156 entries which were judged anonymously. The winning entry was “A Wet World That Burns” by Jimmy Watts of Bellingham, Washington, which tells the heartbreaking true story of the 1999 Whatcom Creek explosion and connects the author’s life of fire and water as a professional fireman and bamboo fly-rod builder with Liam Wood, an 18-year-old angler who was killed while fly fishing in the creek.
Honorable mentions
Honorable mention recognition in 2019 went to two humorous short stories: “The Honeymooners” by Richard Chiappone of Homer, Alaska, and “Les Poissons Toxiques” by Michael Doherty of Seattle, Washington. The 2019 winning story is set to be published soon in the Spring 2020 edition of The American Fly Fisher – Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing. The two Honorable Mention stories will be published at the same time on the AMFF website, www.amff.org.
The other seven 2019 finalists were: “Osprey, the Fisherman” by Colten Braybrooks of Seattle, Washington “Some Fish Make Rivers” by Frank Sargeant of Union Grove, Alabama “The Last Brook Trout” by Bob Linsenmen of Rose City, Michigan “The Wading Game” by Kristin Millgate of Idaho Falls, Idaho “At the Heart of Hollows” by Ben Moyer of Farmington, Pennsylvania “The Manistee River Waltz” by Tim Schulz of Houghton, Michigan “Learning to Mend” by S. Paige Wallace of Portland, Oregon. Since the Award’s inception, twenty awards have been given for the winning entries. Two anthologies of the Traver Award winning stories have been published in two volumes: In Hemingway’s Meadow(2009) and Love Story of the Trout (2010). Beginning in 2018, the Voelker Foundation and the AMFF joined forces to administer the Traver Award. For more information, see www.voelkerfoundation.com and www.amff.org.
Also look at:
http://flyfishing-blog.com/flyfishing-blog.com/2020/01/11/new-exhibit-at-keys-history-discovery-center-explores-saltwater-fly-fishing/
http://flyfishing-blog.com/flyfishing-blog.com/2020/01/10/resilient-waters-a-5-rivers-odyssey-story/
http://flyfishing-blog.com/flyfishing-blog.com/2019/05/25/fishy-fun-at-the-national-museum-of-ireland-natural-history-for-international-year-of-the-salmon/