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We asked the 97 contributors to the Nancy Drew Anthology (Silver Birch Press, October 2016) to send photos featuring the book in their home environments. Author Geosi Gyasi provided this photo of himself and the book in front of the Parliament of Ghana (The Republic of Ghana, West Africa). Geosi contributed the prose poem “Speech & Prize-Giving Day,” featured below, to the 212-page anthology.

Speech & Prize-Giving Day
Inspired by The Quest of the Missing Map

After the speech & prize-giving day, I opened the prize. Winning the first prize in math was no mean feat. You would understand why. The numbers speak for themselves. Out of two hundred students in class, I was the top. But I was weak in other subjects too. Particularly, English, where the teacher bothered us with tons and tons of classics. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tolstoy, you name them. I opened the prize to find a surprise. A storybook. That was the prize. Nothing more. Nothing less. What was a top student in math going to do with a Nancy Drew book? I gave the book a befitting burial. Inside my box, I hid it in a cloud of darkness. Never to see it again until the time of resurrection. When I met Nancy at page one, she held my arms through a journey. With unexpected twists and turns. I was afraid like Ellen Smith who was offered a job to teach piano lessons. At the mysterious place of Rocky Edge. I held my breath at page eight. When Nancy entered the abandoned one-room cottage. The map and the buried treasure quickly came to mind.  I was scared for Nancy’s life. Eager to know what would happen next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Geosi Gyasi is a book blogger, poet, and interviewer. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Galway Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Indiana Voice Journal, Silver Birch Press, and Juked. He is the author of the forthcoming book Geosi Interviews Fifty Writers Worldwide (2016) from Lamar University Literary Press in Texas (U.S.). The winner of the 2015 Ake/Air France Prize for Prose, he blogs at geosireads.wordpress.com.

Find the Nancy Drew Anthology at Amazon.com.