Two Charlotte artists win CPCC literary awards

Poet and Charlotte Observer writer Dannye Romine Powell is this year's winner of Central Piedmont Community College's Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts.

Jonathan K. Rice, editor of Charlotte's Iodine Poetry Journal, won the Irene Blair Honecutt Legacy Award.

Powell was honored for her prize-winning poetry and her leadership and support of writing in Charlotte and North Carolina as a Charlotte Observer columnist.

Powell's poems have appeared in such prestigious journals as Paris Review and Prairie Schooner. She's the author of several poetry volumes, most recently "A Necklace of Bees," and of the 1995 book "Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers."

Rice's award was given for his outstanding service in support of local and regional writers. Rice is an abstract artist and poet. His 12-year-old Iodine Poetry Journal is published twice a year.

Awards for three N.C. writers

Three N.C. writers have been honored recently for their work:

Durham poet Melanie Drane (pictured right) has won 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. The $25,000 award is one of six given each year to women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers.

Drane, a full-time caregiver for her sister, is working on a manuscript of poems titled "The Language Orchard." The poems explore the experience of her sister's severe aphasia after a recent stroke.

Charlotte's Dannye Romine Powell recently received the N.C. English Teacher Association's Ragan-Rubin Award, given each year to a writer who has produced work of literary merit. Powell, a poet and Charlotte Observer reporter, has published three poetry collections and "Parting the Curtains," a collections of interviews with Southern writers.

Children's author Gloria Houston, who lives in western North Carolina, has won her third AAUW of North Carolina Award for Juvenile Literature for her latest picture book, "Miss Dorothy and Her Bookmobile." North Carolina's American Association of University Women chapter previously honored her for "Littlejim's Dreams" and "Bright Freedom's Song." Houston's best known work is "The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree."

Dannye Romine Powell wins N.C. poetry competition

Charlotte Observer writer Dannye Romine Powell has won the 2011 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition for her poem "I Am the Girl."

The N.C. Writers Network sponsors the annual contest, which awarded Powell a $200 prize.

"It's a poem strongly driven by voice and idea," said final judge and poet Dan Albergotti. "I love how this deceptively simple poem navigates what is actually highly complex at the level of syntax, temporality, perspective and emotion."

The poem, chosen from nearly 100 entries, will be considered for publication in the literary journal "The Crucible."

Longtime Observer readers may know that Powell is an accomplished poet. She was also, for years, the Observer's book editor, and she continues to be my most-trusted source for all things literary in North Carolina. She's quick to pass on to me news about interesting new books and local authors. But I didn't know she won this prize until I got the press release. Congratulations, Dannye!