Members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit fire mortors during training at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, July 28, 2019. (Dalton Swanbeck/U.S. Marine Corps)
Writers, poets, photographers — or anyone with a story to tell or image to share about the Marine Corps — have until Jan. 15 to submit an entry for the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s annual awards program.
The competition is open to work across 18 categories from civilians and service members in any branch. Prizes include a $2,000 prize, commemorative plaque and an invitation to the foundation’s annual black-tie dinner.
Categories include autobiography, biography, non-fiction, poetry, reporting and features, along with various photography and videography classifications.
For example, the Robert A. Gannon Award, named after the noted poet, is given for a volume of original verse by a Marine poet dealing with Marine Corps life. The James Webb Award, named for the U.S. senator, author and Navy Cross recipient, honors distinguished fiction related to the service.
The foundation added a new category this year for digital media. The Corporal Jan Bender Award was created in tribute to the “generation of Marines who fought in the Global War on Terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world,” the foundation said in a Nov. 15 news release.
Bender, as a combat correspondent, captured some of the first digital coverage of the war, including scenes from Operation Al Fajr, the Second Battle of Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004.
Established in 1979, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation is dedicated to preserving the Corps’ narrative of sacrifice and triumphs, according to its official website.
Retired Marine Maj. Gen. James Lukeman, the foundation’s president and CEO, said the awards recognize work that may otherwise go unnoticed.
“Someone who’s written poetry about the Marine Corps, you might never hear about them, but they’re able to submit their work and we recognize it, and it gets more well known,” he said in the release.
Cpl. Dalton Swanbeck took home the Sergeant Major Bradley Kasal Award in 2020. It recognizes a distinguished example of a single still photograph by an individual, in black and white or color, that captures the character of the individual Marine or the core values of the Marine Corps.
Swanbeck, during a 2019 deployment to Kuwait, photographed Marines firing mortars at night.
“I never expected to win an award for doing my job, but honestly it made me proud of what I was doing and getting recognized for it,” he recently told Stars and Stripes by email.
Another new category allows artists to submit work that might not fit into the other categories. Examples include digital art or multimedia art forms that tell the Marine Corps story.
“Having such an array of award categories that offer recognition and a real-time portrayal of the Marine Corps story is unparalleled,” longtime military reporter Hope Seck told Stars and Stripes during a recent phone interview.
Seck has won three awards through the program for her journalism.
In 2015 and 2017, she took home The Colonel Robert D. Heinl Jr. Award, which is given for the best article pertinent to Marine Corps history published in a newspaper, magazine, journal or other periodical during the preceding year.
Seck’s April 2014 story for the Marine Corps Times, “Left behind: Without security, without citizenship, interpreters are exposed to death squads,” earned her the honor in 2015.
In 2019, Seck won the Major Megan McClung Award for her reporting on Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. The award is given for a distinguished example of reporting by an individual covering United States Marines abroad.
The submission window closes Jan. 15. Details and submission forms are accessible at the foundations’ official website at marineheritage.org.
