Earlier this month Brad Isles and I attended the annual spring awards conference of the PA Outdoor Writers Association in Oil City, and it was a busy affair. We both participated in board meetings and membership gatherings, since we’re now officers in the organization, and Brad sat in on some Saturday morning news and information seminars.
     I found several opportunities to promote my new book. I donated copies for the Saturday night raffle, secured two more writers to do book reviews, scheduled a radio interview for the following week and taped a television show right on the hotel premises. I also found out whom to talk to about selling books in the Oil City area and the Allegheny National Forest and hiked around town in search of retail book outlets.
     Good friends and fellow writers Ben Moyer and Gregg Rinkus joined Brad and me at our table Saturday evening for the annual craft awards banquet. I struck out on raffle prizes, but I was surprised and pleased to find out I won two important writing awards, the bi-annual “Best Book” award for The F-Troop Camp Chronicles, which brought more attention to the book in the outdoor writing community, and the annual and highly competitive “Pass It On” award for my newspaper feature “Learning to Fish with Uncle Bud.” This was all such a surprise this year, because I was not notified in advance, which is the usual POWA practice. The only downside was that Donna Rai was out of town and didn’t attend, and she would have found a way to get there if she’d known I was getting awards.
     Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.    

~ Don Feigert, 5-18-09