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“Letters from Far Away” wins Writer’s Digest Award

Writer’s Digest has announced that Jean Palmer Heck has been named a winner in the Writer’s Digest 2024 Personal Essay Contest for “Letters from Far Away.” Out of nearly 800 entries, Heck was among the Top Five awardees. The essay—snippets of weekly letters she wrote as a young mother to her parents—describes her life as an expatriate American living in Japan. Filled with stories of mysterious choices at grocery stores, navigating in a country with no street signs, and watching a Miyajima Shrine deer snatch the travel directions from her hands before she could find her hotel, Heck’s humorous and poignant essay ends with an imaginary letter to her now-deceased parents about the lessons of love, literacy and legacy.

“Heart-wrenching and beautiful, Jean!”  —Kathleen Swayze, YA author & composer/musician

“Funny, sincere, interesting, and thought-provoking!” — Cynthia Argentine, author/poet, short-listed for the Golden Kite award

The Manny Awards

"Jean Palmer Heck's long fiction entry starts with a bang as 14-year-old Petras and his family find their Lithuanian village being invaded and burned by the Russian army on Christmas Eve in 1944. The writer has done a great job using dialogue, quickly establishing the main characters, and setting the stakes in just a few short pages…I’m ready to read more to find out what will happen next to Petras and his family.” 

—Julie Tuttle Davis, President, Midwest Writers Workshop Board of Directors