Sweet Success for Gwynne Stanker

Published July 30, 2026

Happy news! Gwynne Stanker just found out her gothic, atmospheric novel DARK MOUNTAIN was a First Place Winner in the 2025 Rocky Mountain Gold Rush Writers Competition, Literary/Mainstream Genre. Set in the rural Ozarks of the 1930’s, the story pits culturally diverse characters against one another, characters whose dark history overshadows and then finally swallows the present in a riveting dual timeline. Playing with speculative elements—while weaving the myths and legends of two separate peoples into the land itself—-this tale is as much about the mountain as it is about the people who fight to live and die upon it.

ABOUT THE BOOK: No one knows why Benjamin’s mother drops her newborn on the edge of the cliff and then jumps.

Once Aunt Ida Jane takes him in, he doesn’t understand why the mountain whispers, Come. When he throws his mind into a hawk and sails across the sky, no one tells him his aunt once did it before him. He doesn’t know why his blood kin commit suicide as easily as most people eat breakfast—and Aunt Ida Jane’s not talking.

What sixteen-year-old Benjamin does know for sure is that his time to die is coming. His heart beats like a ticking clock. So, the next time the mountain whispers, Come, he goes. What he finds in the dark tunnels will chill him to the bone and will change him in ways he could never have understood. He can’t run away. The haunt of Dark Mountain dwells just beneath his skin.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwynne Stanker’s stories, while grounded in reality, often delve into the natural world to create enchantment or approximate the divine. Her characters, however, teeter on the cusp of that no-man’s-land where races and cultures intersect, usually violently, but where sometimes—just sometimes—they find their common humanity. Gwynne took First Place in the Zebulon (Literary, 2017) for THE SUN WALKERS and is published in the anthology FRESH STARTS and several fiction magazines. DARK MOUNTAIN recently won First Place in the Rocky Mountain Gold Rush Competition (Literary/Mainstream, 2025). She lives with her spouse and a bossy poodle on the beautiful Colorado prairie. Be sure to follow her on Facebook.