"True Names" Essay Named Finalist for Prime Number Magazine Contest

I am thrilled to have been a finalist for Prime Number Magazine's Creative Nonfiction contest for my essay "True Names." Eight finalists were chosen from 56 entries, with the three winners being chosen by author Ned Stuckey-French. (I'm happy to say that my friend and grad school colleague Laurie Easter won third prize.)

I'm still looking for a home (read: publication) for my essay, so I can't share the whole thing here, but I thought I'd give you glimpse of it. (Such a tease, I know.)

This essay is part of my manuscript-in-progress, a collection of linked essays called For All We Learned, The Sea, which explores landscape, belief, and the longing for home and belonging in all its many forms.

Here's the beginning of "True Names":

Etch-a-Sketch, Baja, Echo. The tour guide on the whale watching boat knows these humpbacks by name. She recognizes them by their tail markings, the designs they were born with and the wounds they've sustained since then. She announces each whale as it levers its broad tail out of the water like the dark wings of an enormous seagull. To my eyes, this display is an anonymous flash of rubbery black and white on the sun-dazzled water, but our guide assures us that unique patterns decorate each one, the whale tail equivalent of human fingerprints.

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I hope you'll be able read the whole essay somewhere in the near future!