Awards
Trudy's dare-to-be-different inspirational memoir 'Some Things Are Simple Meant to Be' has been selected as a Semi-Finalist at the Chanticleer International Book Awards (CIBA). On March 7, 2024 Trudy was notified that her book has been selected as a Finalist in the CIBA.
CIBA looks for the best books featuring true stories about adventures, life events, unique experiences, travel, personal journeys, global enlightenment, and more. They put books about true and inspiring stories to the test and choose the best among them.
Avenir Light is a clean and stylish font favored by designers. It's easy on the eyes and a great go-to font for titles, paragraphs & more.
Trudy, one of the First Place Winners; Bellingham, Washington; April 20, 2024.
2023 Chanticleer International Book Contest.
Hearten CIBA Award
Uplifting & Inspirational Non-Fiction
Stories for the Heart
(26 categories — several First Place Winners in each.)
“What you are is God’s gift to you . . . what you become is your gift to God.”
— Hans Urs von Balthasar (Swiss)
Avenir Light is a clean and stylish font favored by designers. It's easy on the eyes and a great go-to font for titles, paragraphs & more.
News to smile about
Trudy is one of the Finalists for the 2024 Short Stories and Essays Shorts Book Award.
Title: Regifting With a Twist
At Chanticleer Book Reviews and Media (International).
Same place where Trudy’s memoir, Some Things Are Simply Meant to Be, won First Place in 2024.
This title is in the running for the FIRST PLACE and GRAND PRIZE WINNERS of the 2024 Shorts Book Awards novel competition for Short Stories!
​​​
After Days of Rain, The Sun Decides to Shine
For my father — Tädi
Master of the tightrope, my father, a barber in a tiny
Swiss village, where even dreaming had its limits.
His smile had no sound but meant everything.
Still does - always will.
His unspoken words only I can hear.
His pain with its eerie silence.
I pretend to possibly understand the depth of my dad,
carved into my soul.
I remain mesmerized.
The majestic Alps hidden behind angry clouds
soaring — close to heaven.
On the edge of the gray lake I know can be blue,
a watery gleam of sunshine — a faint outline of snow high up,
my heart skips a beat.
The power of light shining on pure white,
on a mountain, my father’s mountain, a giant called Titlis.
His favorite.
The clearing like an opening of the sky,
as I listen to the past,
pockets of paradise ignite the cloudy sky,
Tädi, smiling from Heaven.
The morning sun holding a memory locked in my heart.
A rare sight because of rain for days, clouds, mysterious fog,
Mein Vater, as big as life.
The irreversible loss of the past illuminates his mountain,
aware of Dad’s presence, remembrances from long ago not
necessarily as they were.
I feel his eyes and soul watching me,
until, at last,
I am beyond his range of vision — not Dad’s wisdom.
A moment in time in an elegant hotel on Lake Lucerne,
on a slippery balcony on the fourth floor,
a vision leaves me crying behind my hand.
The mountain he climbed and conquered as a young man
during World War II.
Sunshine . . . what a magical, spiritual source.
​​
​​​​​​[“After Days of Rain, The Sun Decides to Shine”, Loose Moose Publishing, Prescott, Arizona. ABSOLOOSE Vol. 2, published in April 2018; also, 18th place in Writer’s Digest Popular National Poetry Award, December 2017, with a fifty-dollar gift certificate.]
​​​​​​
How I wish my Tädi could read my poetry today. He never even knew I wrote poetry (I started in 2008). My father died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1989, in Switzerland, at the age of 74.
He did not read or speak English.
​​
​​
