Winners and Finalists of the 2020 Brush & Lyre Prize!
We are honored to share with everyone the winners, finalists, and longlist of the 2020 Brush & Lyre Prize, our multimedia contest!
Winners of the 2020 Brush & Lyre
1st & $3000— Kevin Park, Channbunmorl Sou, & Mylo Lam for “Ma’s Canh Chua Recipe: April – December 1975” (short film to be published on February 18, 2021)
Kevin Park is an aspiring screenwriter and director. He has written numerous screenplays, one of which (“We Make Lemonade – Pilot”) was a quarter-finalist in the 2020 Screencraft Animation competition. He is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Film and Television Production.
Channbunmorl Sou is a chef and storyteller currently pursuing his passion in the entertainment business. He is always looking for ways to help communities of color share their story through art, food, and music.
Mylo Lam is a writer from Los Angeles who now resides in Washington DC. He and his family are refugees of Vietnam and Cambodia. Mylo’s poetry has been published in Barrelhouse and The Coachella Review, and he was a 2019 Sesame Workshop Writers’ Room Fellow. He holds a B.A. in Communications and Theater from UCLA and an Ed.M. from Harvard University.
2nd & $300— Jessica Hiemstra & Paul David Esposti, for “Cormorant” (animation to be published on February 17, 2021)
Jessica Hiemstra is a visual artist, designer and widely published in Canadian literary journals and anthologies. She has published three trade collections of poems, most recently The Holy Nothing with Pedlar Press in 2015. Paul David Esposti makes short films and takes photographs. He has been taking photographs since he was young, in fact, he began taking photographs on a family trip as a child when he saw a pair of swans in a pond. He is especially interested in photographing birds because they are so elusive to the camera. Paul has also worked with National Geographic photographers Cristina Mittermeier and Paul Nicklen and is interested in the relationship between the photograph and environmental action.
3rd & $200— Anika Lisa Love, for “OK!” (audio recording to be published on February 16, 2021)
The scribe is known as,
Anika Lisa Love.
She descends from the desert.
She derives from the root.
She extends through
—the cosmos.
The Finalists
Jessica Abughattas, for “Dinner Party”
Lani O’Hanlon & Fiona Aryan, for “CHERRY BLOSSOMS”
Rebecca Sharp & Steve Smart, for “THIS”
Sarah Walsh, for “Chicago A Whirlpool”
Gisselle Yepes, for “Not an Ode to April 22nd, 2019”
Susan Sonde & Margarett Perry, for “SAVE ME”
Rae Winkelstein, Artem Trofimenko, & Leah Sohotra, for “Yellow Play”
Helen Hofling, for “Armory”
Justin Den Herder, for “Patience Forest”
Phillip Watts Brown, for “Double Exposure: Leaving Madrid”
Niema Lightseed & Sophia Emigh, for “Reach”
Jlaoyang Li, for I Promise to “Enter the Oversized Hat”
NOVA CYPRESS BLACK, for “elemenobeat”
The Longlist
Crystal Koe & Jeffrey Taylor
Canyon Steinzig & Jeanne Lorenz
Marcel Price
Eva Henderson
Natalie Cook
Kate Marshall Flaherty, Mark Korven, & Gabe Flaherty
Hannah Karpinski & Tamar Tabori
Monica Ong
Sarah-Jane
J. Leonard
Jeffrey Wigen
Patrick O’Laoghaire
Laura Secord & Brianna Rhodes
Daniella Balarezo
Tammy Lorcan
Nicole Stockburger
Carmyn Effa
Hannah Cho
Mary Haidri & Melissa Gordon
Kirk Hathaway & Julie Sierra
Allison Fichtelberg
Tia Ballantine
Jessica Hudgins
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
Yehuda Sharim & J. Alex Mathews
Chase Padusniak & Gabrielle Blevins
Claudia Savage
Ellen Stone & Ron Gianola
Gloria Sanders & Alexis Bennett
Lillian Bertram
Karen Leeder, Grigory Semenchuk, & Sascha Conrad
Natalia Rudychev
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