Hill draws creativity from old fairytales and art nouveau, tries to learn something new with every piece
BREVARD COUNTY • MIMS, FLORIDA – Twelve winning writers and twelve illustrators from around the globe, including illustrator, Ben Hill of Mims, have their winning stories and art published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 36, which was officially released in April.
Born in 1996, Hill did not start pursuing art seriously until he was 18 years old. Without any local schools or classes, he chose to be a self-taught digital and traditional artist.
Now living in rural Florida on the Space Coast, over the last three years he has focused on studying with online resources and taking SmArtschool mentorships.
Inspired by artists like Alphonse Mucha and Arthur Rackham, Hill draws creativity from old fairytales and art nouveau.
In his work, he has a love for experimenting with movement, texture, and pattern, and he tries to learn something new with every piece.
Winners in the Writers and Illustrators of the Future contests usually go to Hollywood for a week-long professional workshop and awards event, which is normally done in conjunction with the book release.
However, due to the Coronavirus situation, the workshop and the 36th Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards event have been rescheduled for the Taglyan Complex on August 27 when Hill will be honored.
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The highlight of the ceremony will be the announcement of the year’s two Grand Prize winners who will each receive $5,000. Quarterly winners also receive cash prizes from $1,000 to $500.
Their winning stories and illustrations will appear in the annual anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future Volume 36, Galaxy Press, April 2020.
Participating in the ceremony will be best-selling authors Kevin J. Anderson (Dune prequel series), Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), Eric Flint (1632), Larry Niven (Ringworld), Tim Powers (On Stranger Tides, which Pirates of the Caribbean IV was based on), Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn series, Stormlight Archive) and Robert J. Sawyer, referred to as Canada’s Dean of Science Fiction; as well as award-winning artists Bob Eggleton (11 Chesley Awards and 7 Hugo Awards), Larry Elmore (Dungeons & Dragons book covers), Rob Prior (art for Spawn, Heavy Metal comics and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ciruelo (Eragon Coloring Book), who will all serve as presenters.
Throughout the contest’s 36-year history, more than 774 writers and illustrators have been recognized as winners.
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The Writers of the Future writing contest was initiated by L. Ron Hubbard in 1983 to provide “a means for new and budding writers to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged.”
Based on its success, its sister contest, Illustrators of the Future was created five years later to provide that same opportunity for the aspiring artist.
The intensive mentoring process has proven very successful. The 428 past winners of the writing contest have published 1,150 novels and nearly 4,500 short stories.
They have produced 32 New York Times bestsellers and their works have sold over 60 million copies.
The 358 past winners of the Illustrating Contest have produced over 6,000 illustrations, 360 comic books, graced 624 books and albums with their art and visually contributed to 68 TV shows and 40 major movies.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.