As promised, over the next few weeks, I will be posting entries submitted to the Second Annual Work Stew Essay Contest. Just to be clear: these are not the finalists; those are still to be selected. This is simply a list, which will grow day by day, of all the entries that meet the contest’s basic requirements. The ten finalists will then be chosen from among these entries.
Here’s what’s up so far:
Entry #1: A Freelance Writer’s World
Entry #2: Diverted
Entry #3: Connecting the Dots
Entry #4: Untitled (“I never expected to be taking a new career path…”)
Entry #5: The Downwinders
Entry #6: Untitled (“It’s happened to all of us…”)
Entry #7: Untitled (“In the cold dark before dawn…”)
Entry #8: Confessions of a Web Publisher
Entry #9: Untitled (“I have always had two parallel careers…”)
Entry #10: Untitled (“This is a confession…”)
Entry #11: Pattypan Dreams
Entry #12: Execution?
Entry #13: Untitled (“It came as a surprise…”)
Entry #14: A Teacher’s Frustration
Entry #15: The Stork
Entry #16: Impermanent as Everything Else: A Day in the Life of an Adjunct Professor
Entry #17: Life Behind the Counter
Entry #18: Things Left Undone
Entry #19: Kitchens
Entry #20: Untitled “I cannot wait to drop off…”
Entry #21: The Envy of a Teacher
Entry #22: Business is not Baseball
Entry #23: Weekend at Camp
Work Stew 
With the stroke of a keyboard, Work Stew got this ball rolling – an oasis for writers in a landscape bereft of challenges. It serves as both a contest and relief valve for a diverse bunch of workers who ponied up intimate details of their lives for public scrutiny. There are braver things: scaling a tree to save a cat; trying my ‘liver stir-fry’ recipe. But the employees at Work Stew have graciously given us a venue, a chance at prize money and the hope of eventual publication in the Bainbridge church newsletter (that’s in the legalese, isn’t it?), along with the sort of familial recognition and support of like-minds we lone-wolfish types just plain need, time to time.
I agree with you, Michael! In each one, there’s something I can relate to.
[…] found all the submissions that I published very interesting, and choosing was hard. My main consideration was this: which entries really […]