1st Place /Grand Prize Winner
WAITING ROOM by Patricia Ash of Coronado, California

She will received the L. W. Thomas Award of  $1,000 and her play will be fully produced in September 2009.

Patricia Ash earned her BFA in Theatre from SMU, where her one-act “Waystation” was workshopped.  She has been writing short plays since high school, where the pieces she wrote for the Repertory Company associated with the Coronado School of the Arts are still legendary.  A “US Navy brat,” she lived in such diverse places as Japan, Germany, Rhode Island, and California.  She won the California Young Playwrights Competition and received a full production of her one act “Welcome to Me and Mine” at the Old Globe in San Diego. 

MOTHER'S DAY by Paul Vidich of New York, New York

Paul Vidich will graduate from the Rutgers-Newark MFA program in May 2009. He was a senior executive in the Warner Music and AOL divisions of Time Warner for nineteen years. His short stories and essays have appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including The Nation, Mrbellersneighborhood.com, Narrative Magazine, and Wordriot.org; his stories have been short listed for the 2008 Glimmer Train Award for New Writers, the 2008 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, and the 2009 Richard Bausch Short Story Contest. He is a board member of Poets and Writers and The New School For School Research. In June 2008, he was an invited panelist at the International Short Story Conference in Cork, Ireland and in February 2009 he was an invited reader at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This is his first play.

3rd Place Winner
SHADOWLAND by Mollie Ramos of Valdez, Alaska

Alaskan playwright Mollie Ramos is an elementary school teacher by day and a playwright by night. Her plays have been presented in Alaska, New York, Colorado, and California. She is thrilled to add Mississippi to the list, as it is one of her favorite places in America.

Sheri Graubert is a playwright and actress. 
Plays include: Johnny’s Girl (Festival of New Plays, Prop Thtr, Chicago); TheAdelaide Chronicles (nominated for Cherry Lane mentor program, semi-finalist Mill Mountain Theatre); G.R.A.P.E.H.E.A.D.S (Last Frontier Theatre Conference, The Drilling Company; WBAI Radio: THAW); Love Dust (Sun Dog Theatre Company - Scenes from the Staten Island Ferry); The Vestibule (Festival of One Acts, Neighborhood Playhouse); Last Word (selected by Soho Theatre, London; staged reading TDC/78th St Theatre Lab); St Croix (Clubbed Thumb 50 States and More pageant); Ms. Santos Dream after Reading Medea (TDC);Coffee &Prozac (selected by PFD in London); The Hundred Years’ War (TDC); The Secret of Dogs (Radio); King of the World, (Alcoholic Fringe, Alaska) A Few Good Eggs (Words of Choice) Penny Black (Invited to PlayLabs, Great Plains Theatre Festival 2008, current finalist Women at Plays(4)) Magnolia Day (Source Festival, DC, 2008: ReadingHB Studio Theatre) Gerry (The Drilling Company-Hero) A Few Good Eggs(Words of Choice) Ginto & May (Semi-finalist, Shorter & Sweeter Festival) The Millhouse Contract (semi-finalist, Lakeshore 5th Annual 10 Minute Play Contest) Dick Spacey and the Space Detectives (Only Make Believe). Currently working on a new commission for Only Make Believe, a sequel to Dick Spacey: Dave Space-Out.
More About Sheri Graubert

5th Place Winner
MARKET PLACE by Nicola Pearson of Concrete, Washington 

Nicola Pearson has been writing plays seriously since 1992 when she penned The End, a one-act play which became a semi-finalist in the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville National Ten-Minute Play Competition and then went on to productions in Washington, Oregon and New York City, including the 2004 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. Her full-length plays Lady Macbeth and Ophelia Live!, The Messenger, The Blue Light Zone and From Me, To You, have all been produced in Washington and From Me, To You recently won a prize in the Fremont Centre Theater New Play Contest in Pasadena, CA. Her latest full-length play, Carried by the Current, was a winner in the 2003 Northwest Playwrights’ Competition and won the 2005 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. Recently Nicola has been working on a series of related one-acts called, The Soul Plays, of which Market America is the latest. The Genius Room, the first of The Soul Plays was performed at the 2007 Sydney “Short and Sweet” in Sydney, Australia. Nicola lives in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains with her husband and children.