Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Justin Fornal Entry Title: What I Learned Chewing the Stimulant Khat Across Three Countries Entry Credit: Justin Fornal Judge Comment: Justin Fornal’s essay could seem to be a travel writer’s party trick: Go to the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa to partake in a time-honored social ritual. But this is no party trick. Chewing on the intoxicating leaves of khat, Fornal takes his readers on a surprising journey linked to centuries past and with an immediate connection to today’s global issues and humans’ long search for solace, comfort and community in troubled times.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Mariel Wamsley Entry Title: An Elegy for Crystal Cove, Our Family’s Piece of Paradise Entry Credit: Joan Bregstein Judge Comment: From childhood through adulthood, Joan Bregstein treasured the one-bedroom, tropical condo her parents bought in the 1960s. Bregstein fashions a cinematic story beginning in an age without sunscreen. She portrays life at a vacation retreat that’s replete with iguanas, tennis courts, a saltwater pool and a white sand beach, overlooking the absurdly blue Caribbean. Yet over the decades this transformed into what she calls “its own type of burden” as she writes intimately about a family’s joys and deep sorrows.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: John Penner Entry Title: A total eclipse is more than a spectacle. So I’m on the road to see it — again Entry Credit: John Penner Judge Comment: Invoking ancient astronomers, the Bible, Milton, Shakespeare, Annie Dillard and Ray Bradbury, Los Angeles Times writer John Penner probes the depths of humanity and his own awe with eclipses of the sun and moon. With an explanatory approach to describe the science behind the wonders of eclipses, Penner helps us see and feel what leads him to chase across the continent to document an on-the-ground yet still up-close look at a solar eclipse.
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Caroline Van Hemert Entry Title: The fleet-winged ghosts of Greenland Entry Credit: Caroline Van Hemert Judge Comment: Biologist Caroline Van Hemert describes herself as a “falcon fangirl.” Her reportage from the polar realms of Greenland makes clear that she is the perfect guide to help illuminate the precarious environmental factors that endanger the fastest of birds whose “routes…arc like spaghetti across the globe.” She issues an alert “that the rarest of the rare may once again become blessedly common – if we care enough to act quickly.”
