City of Ventura Mayor Cheryl Heitmann will honor all participants and artists of the sixth annual Art Tales creative writing contest with a special reception and reading with refreshments at E.P. Foster Library, prescription 2nd floor, cialis 651 E. Main Street in downtown Ventura, Wednesday, May 14, at 5:30 pm. The public, family and friends are invited to hear winners read their entries and receive cash prizes for 1st and 2nd place, journals for 3rd place plus certificates and bound editions for all top entries. For more information about Art Tales, visit www.cityofventura.net/arttales.

The 2014 winners are:

Prize (1st place, 2nd place, 3rd/Tie, 3rd Tie/Honorable Mention)
Youth Poetry: Sihyun Na, Nadia Connelly, Anna Nelles, Chloe Vaughan
Youth Fiction: Hana Vrablik, Abigail Carroll, Bailey Welch, Niklas Shore
High School Poetry: Cianna Calia, Dahyun Na, Olivia Loorz, Sarah Yenney
High School Fiction: Erin Stoodley, Gabrielle Genhart, Brodie Shore, Monica Boedigheimer
Adult Poetry: T. G. Lynch, Donna Prather, Mary Kaye Rummel, HM: Joe Amaral
Adult Fiction: Toni Guy, Annabelle Warren, Lynne Vrablik, Gerald Zwers

For the 2014 contest “open to writers everywhere,” youth, high school and adult writers submitted 70 works of short fiction and poems inspired by City of Ventura Municipal Art Collection works of art currently on loan at the library and created by artists Jane McKinney, Alberta Fins, Katherine Chang Liu, Debra McKillop, Catherine Jessie Botke and Elisse Pogofsky Harris (some artists plan to attend the reception). Contestants ranged in age from 9 to 89 with submissions from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles, a few from the Bay area and one from the Philippines. Three-quarters of the entries came from city of Ventura residents, over half were by adults, 20 by teenagers and the many of the remaining youth entries were submitted by Ventura Unified School District students, classrooms and teachers.

The four contest judges were Senior Librarian for E.P. Foster Library Sara Roberts, Ventura Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Kathy Asher, Public Art Commissioner Susan Cook and City of Ventura Community Partnerships Manager Denise Sindelar who said, “So many excellent entries this year made judging very hard, with five tie votes, and an honorable mention in Adult Poetry to recognize the record number of 29 mostly outstanding entries in that category.”

For more contact Denise Sindelar, 805.658.4793 or [email protected].

This release is available at www.cityofventura.net.