Colonel Darron L. Wright Award

Thanks to a generous donation from the Blake and Bailey Family Fund, Line of Advance is presenting the 2026 Colonel Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards. Like us, Darron Wright was a soldier: a larger than life infantry commander with several tours under his belt. And also like us, Col. Wright was a writer: a thoughtful, reflective artist, who was eager to tell the truth about his men with compassion and a commander's eye. He was killed in a September 2013 parachute training accident. Col. Wright was the author of a 2012 memoir Iraq Full Circle: From Shock and Awe to the Last Combat Patrol in Baghdad and Beyond. This award is presented in his name in an effort to honor his memory. 

Since 2016, the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards have annually recognized excellence in prose (includes fiction, non-fiction, and hybrid forms) and poetry by U.S. military service members and veterans. In 2020, organizers announced additional prose and poetry categories for immediate family members of U.S. military service members and veterans.

Cash prizes of $250, $150, and $100 are available in each “service member/veteran” and “family” group, for a total of four categories. The submission window will be open on our submittable page from June 1st to July 31st, 2026. SUBMIT NEW & PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED WORK HERE for the 2026 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards. LOA reserves the right to request proof of military service/connection.

The guest judge for this year’s Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards is journalist, war correspondent, and college professor Jackie Spinner. Jackie Spinner is a professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago, where she oversees the photojournalism and broadcast media minors and is faculty advisor to the Columbia Chronicle. She was a staff writer for The Washington Post for 14 years and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is the editor of Gateway Journalism Review. Jackie is the author of Tell Them I Didn’t Cry: A young journalist’s story of joy, loss and survival in Iraq (Scribner 2006).  She is the director and producer of two documentary films, Don't Forget Me and Morocco, Morocco, which aired on PBS. You can find Jackie’s work all over the internet, but here’s a link to some of it. It’s a real honor to have Jackie as the guest judge for this year’s contest.

Line of Advance is so proud to have people within our orbit become successful. It’s the coolest thing. Former winners, friends, and sometime-guest-judges that have gone on to publish novels, collections of short-fiction and poetry, and other works are:

  • Jillian Danback-McGhan, “Midwatch” (Split/Lip Press, 2024)

  • Dewaine Farria: “Revolutions of All Colors: A Novel” (Syracuse University Press, 2020)

  • Ray McPadden, "We March at Midnight: A War Memoir" (Blackstone Publishing, 2021)

  • Travis Klempan: "Hills Hide Mountains" (MilSpeak Books, 2024) and "Have Snakes, Need Birds" (Koehler Books, 2020)

  • Ryan Stovall, Black Snowflakes Smothering A Torch: How to Talk to Your Veteran - a Primer (Woodhall Press, 2022)

  • Ben Weakley, "Heat + Pressure: Poems from War" (Middle West Press, 2022)

  • Eric Chandler "Kekekabic" (Finishing Line Press, 2022)

  • Benjamin Inks, "Soft Targets" (Double Dagger, 2023)

  • Lisa Stice, "Letters from Conflict: Poems" (Middle West Press, 2024)