Awards come and go, and it pays to be cautious especially in these days of increased book publishing opportunities. Here is a new award I can personally vouch for having been a member of the Story Circle Network for years. ~ Dani Greer ~~~~~ May Sarton under her portrait By Paula Stallings Yost The winner of Story Circle Network's first annual Sarton Memoir Award will be announced at  Stories from the Heart , the biannual SCN National Memoir Conference, at the Wyndham Hotel in Austin, Texas, April 13-15, 2012.  The award is named in honor of May Sarton (1912-1995), the distinguished American poet, novelist, and author of twelve memoirs and journals. Readers have found Sarton 's work to be inspiring, moving, and thought-provoking. While widely acclaimed for her fiction and poetry, Sarton ’s best and most enduring work may lie in her journals. In these honest, probing accounts of her solitary life, she deals with such issues as aging, isolation, solitude, friendship, ...

May Sarton with painting and live photo Our theme this month is "out-of-the-ordinary" and I have a list as long as my arm of people and organizations in the publishing world that fit the theme. Today I'll share the new May Sarton Memoir Award , a project of the Story Circle Network , a memoir-writing group for women. We've talked about SCN before, and founder, Susan Wittig Albert, is an occasional guest at the Blood-Red Pencil. The award is her brain child, and is yet another tool the organization uses to foster "lifewriting" for women. We all have stories to tell, and there are many reasons to tell them. The Sarton award is meant for women who have taken their stories to the ultimate goal - publication. I don't think we've discussed writing awards here, but they are an important part of the publishing world and book promotion. The process of choosing award winners is also an important, sometimes complicated, and often time-consuming process. ...