Colonel Darron L. Wright Award

Thanks to a generous donation from the Blake and Bailey Family Fund, Line of Advance is presenting the 2024 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 September 1st to November 1st, 2024. SUBMIT HERE for the 2024 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards.

This year’s guest judge is J.G.P. MacAdam. MacAdam is a dad, an Enemy Marksmanship Badge recipient, and the first in his family to earn a college degree. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Colorado Review, The Atticus Review, JMWW, Pithead Chapel, Fatal Flaw Literary, The Point, Military Experience and the Arts and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. His novelette titled A Square of Dirt about the birth, life and death of a forward operating base in the Tangi Valley, Afghanistan is forthcoming from Emerge Literary. His honors include a Pushcart nomination as well as 2nd place in the 2021 Colonel Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Award. Furthermore, he serves as the Assistant Substack Editor at Consequence Forum. He currently lives in Oregon with his spouse, two cats, three fishes, unknown amount of snails, kid, puppy, and somewhere around fifty houseplants. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram or X (Twitter). Find more at jgpmacadam.com