Every two years, the National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW) hosts its biennial competition in Letters, Art and Music. Three writers from the Chesapeake Bay Branch have been notified of their 2024 awards in Letters.
In Biennial 2020 and 2022, Gail Wilson Kenna of Wicomico Church won nine awards, four in first place. In 2024, Kenna entered a new category, the Ekphrastic, sponsored by the NLAPW’s Pensacola Branch. The submission, a “Note to Mr. John Singer Sargent,” won third place. The 300-word limit for prose about a painting made it a popular category, Kenna said. Her submission, a fictional letter to John Singer Sargent, has the voice of Hylda Wertheimer. Her portrait is one of 12 that Sargent painted of….