The John D. Voelker Foundation and the American Museum of Fly Fishing (AMFF) are pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award: “Blue Lines” by Alexander Benoît. Mr. Benoît’s essay describes how he creates rough hand-drawn maps of places he has fly fished to help him remember those places and events, and to tell stories. He describes a deep map of a fishing trip in Alaska to communicate the story to his ailing grandfather, who had once entertained him with stories of his own trip to Alaska years ago.

Alexander Benoît is a high school and middle school teacher at Greenfield School in Wilson, North Carolina. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “It’s an honor to receive the Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award and I look forward to seeing my story in the American Fly Fisher,” Mr. Benoît said. “I’d like to thank my grandfather and my family for providing the inspiration to write this story.”

Read the winning entry by clicking the link below.

The 2020 competition drew a field of 60 entries. Entries were judged anonymously to narrow the pool down to seven finalists. The Traver Award judges also bestowed Honorable Mention recognition on two other entries (click to read):

The other four finalists were:

“Caddis Flats” by Trigg White of Allenspark, Colorado
“Homecoming” by Robert H. Miller of Louisville, Kentucky
“The Mertrout” by Jon Tobey of Duvall, Washington
“A Small Act of Reverence” by Anthony Lavers of Oxford, UK