A s I speak with Toni Lepeska about her grand-prize win in the Writer’s Digest 3rd Annual Personal Essay Awards, it strikes me by the passion in her voice that this is someone who takes her writing career very seriously. She’s been a professional journalist for 30 years, and she says that her favorite stories to cover have always been about people rising above adversity.
“Those stories, I think they resonate with people because we all have something that challenges us and that maybe we think we cannot beat,” she says. “Those stories can be so inspiring to people.” She recounts a particularly impactful story of a woman who had a facial tumor that led to
