Lakewood Author Given State’s Prestigious Ohioana Award

When it comes to writing, author Laura Maylene Walter is all-Ohio.

She’s got the award to prove it.

The Pennsylvania native, who has called Lakewood home for the past seven years, will be honored in Columbus today with the Ohioana Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant. 

The award is given to an unpublished author under the age of thirty. It comes with a $1,000 check.

Walter, 31, who applied for the grant last year, was one of a half-dozen Ohio authors selected from around the state for one of the Ohioana Book Awards.

The Sloane Avenue resident is wrapping up a book called Opal, a work of fiction about a child named Opal, who grows up with the fallout of a cursed stone that her mother wrote a book about. 

The novel has taken Walter a few years to write, but she wants it to be perfect when she submits it to be published. 

“I know the importance of waiting to submit until it’s completely ready,” she said. 

Her work has appeared in Inkwell, American Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, South Dakota Review; her essays about writing have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Writer magazine and on the American Literary Review website.

“Winning the Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant is a highlight in my journey not only as an emerging literary writer, but also in my progress thus far on the novel,” she said. “This grant serves as encouragement, support, and a means to dedicate myself anew to the novel and my writing.”

Walter also tends to her website, where she blogs about truth, fiction, and the writing life.

And she’s no stranger to recognition for her work.

Her fiction Laura has netted numerous awards, including the 2010 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction; 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination for “Live Model;” and the 2003 Sophie Kerr Prize, Washington College. 

What makes the Ohioana award so special?

“I think it feels special because it’s from an organization I admire because they’re really supportive of Ohio writers,” she said. “I’ve lived her for seven years, so I am starting to consider myself an Ohioan.”