If you provide incentives, they will come. On June 8, Quad City Development Group President Thom Hart and Davenport Mayor Ed Winborn announced that the Quad Cities will provide locations for a new feature by filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who previously collaborated on the Oscar-nominated drama Half Nelson. John O'Donnell Stadium, in particular, will play a key role in the currently untitled project, which concerns a young man from the Dominican Republic who - inspired by Field of Dreams - journeys to Iowa to play in the minor leagues. Project co-producers Jamie Patricof and Jeremy Kipp Walker stated that recent legislation providing incentives to film in Iowa, and the stadium's "beautiful field" along the Mississippi River, were key motivators in their decision to shoot locally, with filming scheduled to run from late July through mid-September. Numerous Quad Cities locations are currently being scouted, and the filmmakers hope to employ local talent in the feature's production. For information on the Iowa Film Promotion Act, which was signed into law on May 17, visit (http://www.traveliowa.com/film). - Mike Schulz

For the River Cities' Reader's fourth-annual short-fiction contest, we got mean. Diabolical. Bound-for-hell cruel.

Oh, sure, in the past we gave the challenge of starting or ending with a particular line, or including seven specific words in a story. We've limited you to 200 words.

This year, in addition to the relatively mundane prompts of a photograph and a fortune cookie, we devised what we called the "Wheel of Fortune challenge," in which authors could not use the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E. As you'll see from the winners and other selected entries, that nasty constraint gave us our most creative and playful entries.

Churches United has announced two awards received in support of its Hunger Ministry: $500 from United Church of Christ, Neighbors in Need, and $5,000 from the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ. Churches United operates 23 food pantries and three meal sites in the Quad Cities area. In 2006, the volunteers that work in the food pantries responded to more than 26,800 visits, and meal-site volunteers provided more than 30,800 meals to those who were hungry.

The Reverend George McDaniel, author of A Great & Lasting Beginning, will be awarded a State Historical Society of Iowa "Shambaugh Award of Merit" for his history of St. Ambrose University. The award, one of two given this year, will be presented at a luncheon in Des Moines on May 21. Benjamin F. Shambaugh Awards of Merit are given to one or more significant books on Iowa history published during the preceding year, based on their contributions to Iowa history, scholarship, readability, and appropriateness for the intended audience, according to the State Historical Society's Web site. A Great & Lasting Beginning is available at the St. Ambrose University bookstore and the Davenport Borders store, and it can be ordered online at (http://www.sau.edu/125).