Past Winners

Editors’ Prize Winners

Jump to: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006

2023 Contest Winners

FICTION 
Winner:
Tori Malcangio of Poway, CA, for “Invasive Species”

Runners-up: 
Mark Barlex of London, UK, for “Progress”
Hana Choi of Seattle, WA, for “Naked”
Paul Curley of Portland, OR, for “The Side Effects”

Finalists:   
Madeline Furlong of Seattle, WA, for “Heat Wave”
Francisco González of Tucson, AZ, for “Gameness”
Charlie Kingree of Wilmington, NC, for “In Total Darkness”
Liza Monroy of Santa Cruz, CA, for “The Highway Nanny”
Cameron Moore of New York, NY, for “21 Questions for Teddy Shawcross”
Abhijith Ravinutala of Austin, TX, for “It Ain’t Easy”
Renée Thompson of Folsom, CA, for “The Spectaculars”
Amanda S. Torres of Fort Collins, CO, for “Breathing Exercises”
Philip Wilson of Glasgow, UK, for “The Myth of the Self-Made Man”
Frankie Zwick of Austin, TX, for “Roughstock”

POETRY
Winner:
Lance Larsen of Provo, UT, for “Having My Back Erased” and other poems

Runners-up:   
Chaun Ballard of Lincoln, NE, for “A Poem in Which I Name the Flower” and other poems
Fleda Brown of Traverse City, for “The Walk Poems”
Tina Schumann of Seattle, WA, for “Catastrophizing: A Love Story” and other poems

Finalists: 
Mike Carlson of Brooklyn, NY, for “Theory and Practice of Landscape Poetry”
Kate DeLay of Tuscaloosa, AL, for “Repair” and other poems
Matt Donovan of Amherst, MA, for “On Seeing the First Line of ‘Wild Geese’ on a Tote Bag at Whole Foods” and other poems
Benjamin Gucciardi of Berkeley, CA, for “Catania” and other poems
Amy Miller of Ashland, OR, for “Two Snowmobiles” and other poems
Susan Mitchell of Boca Raton, FL, for “Mysterium” and other poems
Swati Rana of Goleta, CA, for “After Westward Expansion, You Dream of Fog” and other poems
Talin Tahajian of New Haven, CT, for “Priory Rd” and other poems
Kieron Walquist of Salt Lake City, UT, for “Wash” and other poems
Cecilia Woloch of Los Angeles, CA, for  “How my Father Learned Algebra” and other poems

NONFICTION
Winner:
Matthew Edmundson of Boise, ID, for “How to Love Animals”

Runners-up:  
Rochelle Goldstein Bay of Woodstock, NY, for “The Tarantula Arms”
Maureen Stanton of Georgetown, ME, for “The Birds”
Kathryn Wilder of Dolores, CO, for “After Birth”

Finalists:  
Erin Branning of Chicago, IL, for “It Comes in Waves”
Peter Chilson of Moscow, ID, for “Collateral Damage: The Map Bomb”
Philip Goulding of Bodicote, Banbury, UK, for “Nothing Says Hollywood Like Ipswich”
Nancy Jainchill of Woodstock, NY, for “How a Porn Star Rehabbed My Understanding of Feminism”
Carol Kaynor of Fairbanks, AK, for “What I Still Don’t Know About Dogs”
Will McGrath of Minneapolis, MN, for “In Cedar-Riverside”
Matt W. Miller of Exeter, NH, for “Slacktide”
Jim Steck of Menlo Park, CA, for “The Red Button”
Robert Stewart of Prairie Village, KS, for “Callahan’s Law”
Yao Xiao of New York, NY, for “House of Joy”

 

 

2022 Contest Winners

FICTION
Winner:
Ann-Marie Blanchard of Baton Rouge, LA, for “Trouble Will Find You”
 
Runners-up:
Therese Eiben of Hudson, NY, for “You’re Starting to Get a Reputation”
Becky Mandelbaum of Bellingham, WA, for “Dead Animals”
Jonathan Wei of Austin, TX, for “The Donym”
 
Finalists:
Hillary Behrman of Seattle, WA, for “Winter’s Barter”
Hana Choi of Seattle, WA, for “Lotus Nails & Spa”
Laura Venita Green of New York, NY, for “Banned”
Summer Hammond of Wilmington, NC, for “The Several Sins of Heidi Spencer”
Peter Kessler of Philadelphia, PA, for “Platypus”
Arron Kluz of Madison, WI, for “Static Void”
Zoe Pappenheimer of Northampton, MA, for “Your Brain Is Just Fine”
Ben Peled of Brooklyn, NY, for “In the Giant’s Mouth”
Sophie Strohmeier of Brooklyn, NY, for “The Third and Other Harry”
S. P. Tenhoff of Nagoya, Japan, for “The Patron Saint of Mother Beebe’s Parlor”
 
NONFICTION
Winner:
Robin Reif of New York, NY, for “Someone”
 
Runners up:
Grace Plowden of New York, NY, for “Naff: A Rumination on Taste and Tastelessness”
Mark R. Schwehn of Valparaiso, IN, for “The Old Man and the Tree”
Kathleen Spivack of Watertown, MA, for “Language”
 
Finalists:
Heather Buchanan of Laguna Niguel, CA, for “Little Giants: The Story of a Fire Hydrant and Other Heroes”
Kenneth Garcia of South Bend, IN, for “Building the Perfect Bookcase: The Image that Starts in Your Head”
Vive Griffith of Austin, TX, for “My Students’ Future Lives”
Kateri Kosek of Sheffield, MA, for “Chasing Stella”
Ann Levin of New York, NY, for “Top Ten”
Priscilla Long of Seattle, WA, for “Finding Our Way: On Maps and Mapping”
Dan Musgrave of Miami, FL, for “Nathan”
Nynke Salverda Passi of Fairfield, IA, for “Baby Jesus Daubed with Cologne and Crowned with Gold Paper”
Heather Quinn of St. Paul, MN, for “Solitaire”
Brad Wetherell of Brooklyn, NY, for “Nothing Here Is Free”
 
POETRY
Winner:
Heidi Seaborn of Seattle, WA, for “House Hunting” and other poems
 
Runners-up:
Benjamin Grossberg of West Hartford, CT, for “Finale” and other poems
Aaron Coleman of Ann Arbor, MI, for “Like wind she passed through the valley” and other poems
Rebecca Foust of Kentfield, CA, for “Stone Fruit” and other poems
 
Finalists:
Chaun Ballard of Lincoln, NE, for “Yes, I Beat Jason’s High-Yellah Ass For Making Fun of My Pronunciation, & Emancipation Was Really Not That Long Ago” and other poems
Danielle Cadena Deulen of Decatur, GA, for “Lake Box” and other poems
torrin a. greathouse of Minneapolis, MN, for “A Dead SHark Isn’t Art” and othr poems
Robert Laidler of Brownstown, MI, for “Epistle”
Christine Robbins of Olympia, WA, for “A Partial Account of the Trees”
Stephanie Saywell of Sunnyside, NY, for “RSVP” and other poems
Mike Schneider of Pittsburg, PA, for “Cornette” and other poems
Kyoko Uchida of Brooklyn, NY, for “Border” and other poems
Carolyne Wright of Seattle, WA, for “An Act of Kindness in Bahia” and other poems
Felicia Zamora of Cincinnati, OH, for “Ecogodliness” and other poems

2021 Contest Winners

FICTION
Winner:
Alix Christie of San Francisco, CA, for “Everychild”
 
Runners-up:
Caroline Casper of San Francisco, CA, for “Sneaker Waves”
Nur Kahn of Iowa City, IA, for “A Fate like That”
Amy Stuber of Lawrence, KS, for “The Last Summer”
 
Finalists:
Olga Breydo of  New York, NY, for “Wounded Crows”
May-lee Chai of San Francisco, CA, for “The Actors”
Cassie Condrey of Lake Providence, LA, for “A Man Like Me”
Mala Gaonkar of New York, NY, for “Venkamma’s Dowry”
Ben Jackson of Calgary, Canada, for “The Divorce”
Samuel Jensen of Ypsilanti, MI, for “Funny Papers”
Rachel Keranen of Dassel, MN, for “Glass”
Kent Nelson of Ouray, CO, for “The Architect”
Emma Sloley of Palm Springs, CA, for “The Blood Recluse”
Janet Thielke of Houston, TX, for “Landscapes of Hell”
 
NONFICTION
Winner:
Matthew Wamser of Ypsilanti, MI, for “Lost Birds of the Pacific”
 
Runners up:
Robert Cochran of Fayetteville, AR, for “Semester of the Women: Reading Grace Paley in Quarantine”
William Roebuck of Arlington, VA, for “Reading Projects”
Daniel James Waters of Clear Lake, Iowa, for “Breathe for Me”
 
Finalists:
Margaret Donovan Bauer of Greenville, NC, for “Queen Me”
Jane C. Elkin of Annapolis, MD, for “Confessions of a Conflicted Handwriting Analyst”
Casey Haymes of Santa Fe, NM, for “Yard Work”
Reeves Keyworth of Tucson, AZ, for “A Wolf’s Living”
Terri Lewis of Denver, CO, for “Disappearing Act”
Eric Pinder of Berlin, NH, for “The Hullabaloo about Henry Thoreau”
Alicia Ezekiel-Pipkin of Orlando, FL, for “Run like a Girl”
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers of Oberlin, OH, for “Ear Training”
David Waltner-Toews of Kitchener, Canada, for “What We Talk about When We Talk about Insects”
Jessica Watson of Land O Lakes, FL, for “Bodywork”
 
POETRY
Winner:
Jennifer Perrine of Portland, OR, for “Make an Effort to Remember. Or, Failing That, Invent,” and other poems
 
Runners-up:
Kelli Russell Agodon of Port Ludlow, WA
Kelan Nee of St. Louis, MO
Marcus Wicker of Memphis, TN
 
Finalists:
Alex Chertok of Dryden, NY
Susan Rich of Seattle, WA
Matty Layne Glasgow of Salt Lake City, UT
Cintia Santana of Menlo Park, CA
L.J. Sysko of Wilmington, DE
Luisa A. Igloria of Norfolk, VA
Corey Zeller of Syracuse, NY
Kieron Walquist of St. Louis, MO
Grace MacNair of Brooklyn, NY
Michael Fraser of Etobicoke, Canada

2020 Contest Winners

FICTION
Winner:
Thomas Dodson of Somerville, MA, for “Keeping”

Runners Up: 
Jesse Lee Brooks of Baltimore, MD, “As Far As You Can See”
Samantha Xiao Cody of Chevy Chase, MD, for “The Burial”
Mona Susan Power of St. Paul, MN, for “Naming Ceremony”

Finalists: 
Brad Eddy of Pittsburgh, PA, for “Lots of Places Are Exactly Like This”
Eva Freeman of Brooklyn, NY, for “In the Aftermath”
Jeremy Griffin of Myrtle Beach, SC, for “The Guidebook for the Evaluation of Revelatory Phenomena”
Shakarean Hutchinson of Goose Creek, SC, for “The Body Was There”
Danny Lang-Perez of Nashville, TN, for “Professionals”
Becky Mandelbaum of Bellingham, WA, for “Babette Has Gone Missing”
Sabrina Napolitano of Oviedo, FL, for “Get Gone”
Andrea Scully of Larkspur, CA, for “Lost and Found”
Mary Wang of New York, NY, for “The Child Is A Mother Too”
Kae Yen-Smith of Los Angeles, CA, for “We Are Not Here to Police You”

POETRY
Winner: 
Chelsea B. DesAutels of Houston, TX, for “Maybe You Need To Write a Poem About Mercy” and other poems

Runners-Up: 
Tiana Clark of Nashville, TN, for “Self-Portrait at Divorce” and other poems
Brandi Nicole Martin of Tallahassee, FL, for “No Market for Unfixable Suffering” and other poems
Jane Satterfield of Baltimore, MD, for “Costumery: Cento with Lines from Early Reviews of Wuthering Heights” and other poems

Finalists: 
Justin Rovillos Monson, of Clarkston, MI
Jenny Molberg of Kansas City, MO
Hieu Minh Nguyen of Oakland, CA
Kristin Fogdall of Morrisville, VT
Dāshaun Washington of Northampton, MA
Derick Mattern of University City, MO
torrin a. greathouse of Minneapolis, MN
Carol Ann Davis of Newtown, CT
Aaron Coleman of University City, MO
Wesley Rothman of Barrington, IL

NONFICTION
Winner: 
Robert Stothart of Thermopolis, WY, for “Opera House”

Runners-Up:
Sage Marshall of Telluride, CO, for “The Valley of Boys”
Clare Needham of Brooklyn, NY, for “Cover Up”
Alexander Ramirez of Sacramento, CA, for “On Defeat and Diego”

Finalists:
Deborah Young Bradshaw of Jamesville, NY, for “Dry Cows”
Kermit Frazier of Brooklyn, NY, for “How I Danced”
Frimet Goldberger of Suffern, NY, for “Love, Question Mark”
Jenni Gordon of Ann Arbor, MI, for “Most of the Odd Are at Large”
Rachel Keranen of New York, NY, for “I Didn’t Know We Could Do Those Things: The Parallel Universe of Deadwind
Megan Nix of Arvada, CO, for “Benevolent Deception”
Eric Pinder of Berlin, NH, for “Exit, Pursuing a Bear”
William Roebuck of Arlington, VA, for “Raqqa’s Inferno”
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers of Washington, DC, for “Someone Older: A Catalogue of Dangers”
James Roth of Mutare, Zimbabwe, for “Black Lives Don’t Matter in Zimbabwe”

2019 Contest Winners

FICTION
Winner:
Seth Fried of New York, NY, for “Trezzo”

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Katie Knoll of Iowa City, IA, for “Murphy, Murphy”
Daniel Stolar of Evanston, IL, for “The Benefit”
Diana Xin of Seattle, WA, for “Joy Comes in the Morning”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Sara Batkie of Chicago, IL, for “A House in Order”
Yoon Choi of Anaheim Hills, CA, for “A Map of the Simplified World”
Claire Cox of Brooklyn, NY for “Look at You”
Brendan Egan of Midland, TX for “The Gnossiennes”
Andrew Erkkila of Jersey City, NJ for “Dirty August”
Tim Erwin of Brooklyn, NY, for “The King of Oklahoma”
Michael Lancaster of Missoula, MT, “Out with a Bang”
Sahar Mustafah of Orland Park, IL for “Triumph”
Katey Schultz of Burnsille, NC for “Wait for Me”
Mary Winsor of Fairfax, VA, for “Do Svidaniya”

POETRY
Winner:
Heather Treseler, of Newton Center, MA, for “The Lucie Odes”

Runners Up (alphabetically):
Allison Pitinii Davis, of Youngstown, OH
Melissa Studdard, of Cypress, TX
Javier Zamora, of San Rafael, CA

Finalists (alphabetically):
Mary Ardery, of Carbondale, IL
Leila Chatti, of Cleveland Heights, OH
Benjamin Garcia, of Auburn, NY
torrin a. greathouse, of Minneapolis, MN
Ted Lardner, of Gates Mills, OH
sam sax, of Austin, TX
Heidi Seaborn, of Seattle, WA
TC Tolbert, of Tucson, AZ
Keith S. Wilson, of Chicago, IL
Stella Yin-Yin Wong, of New York, NY

NONFICTION
Winner:
Jennifer Anderson of Lewiston, ID, for “The Trailer”

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Cathryn Klusmeier of Sitka, AK, for “Gutted”
Katherine Schifani of Minturn, CO, for “Stability Tests”
Melinda Smith of Albuquerque, NM, for “Exile in the Desert with Sarmi Moussa”

Finalists (alphabetically):
May-lee Chai of San Francisco, CA, for Norwegian Mothers’ Milk”
Gemma de Choisy of Iowa City, IA, for “The Constant”
Sharon F. Doorasamy of Winston-Salem, NC, for “To Holdup the Sky”
Kermit Frazier of Brooklyn, NY, for “Pee”
Steffan Hruby of Minneapolis, MN, for “The Universal Hologram”
David Zane Mairowitz of Avignon, France, for “Auschwitz on Acid”
Susan O’Neill of Brooklyn, NY, for “Catwoman and Ruth”
Alex Stein of Boulder, CO, for “Why the Poets Are Lonely”
Robert Stofel from Lobelville, TN, for “The Underworld of the Farm”
Patti White of Tuscaloosa, AL, for “The Fall”

2018 Contest Winners

Fiction
Winner:
Amanda Baldeneaux of Commerce City, CO for “Salt Land”

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Jedediah Cannon of Santa Fe, NM, for “Gateway to the Arctic”
Angela Kelly of Spartanburg, SC, for “Life After People”
Kathleen Founds of Marina, CA, for “Our Damaged Daughters”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Olga Breydo of New York, NY, for “Not a Star”
Julia Eagleton of Brooklyn, NY, for “She Came from the Sea”
Ernest Finney of Nevada City, CA, for “Dancers”
Jeremy Griffin of Myrtle Beach, SC, for “Crimes Like These”
Ann Harleman of Oakland, CA, for “Benessere”
Hanh Hoang of Tallahassee, FL, for “Are Such Things Possible, Ahn Ly?”
J. R. Hoffmann of Elmhurst, IL, for “Too Far From Spot”
Eric Boehling Lewis of Brooklyn, NY, for “Yellow Jackets”
Mona Susan Power of St. Paul, MN, for “Goodreads Warrior”
Robert Powers of Lafayette, IN, for “Farmer Mao’s Interview”

Poetry
Winner:
Diane Seuss of Kalamazoo, MI

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Chris Hayes of Tallahassee, FL
Zachary Lunn of Raeford, NC
Jenny Molberg of Kansas City, MO

Finalists (alphabetically):
Cortney Lamar Charleston of Jersey City, NJ
Tiana Clark of Edwardsville, IL
Michelle Collotta of Brookyln, NY
Benjamin Garcia of Auburn, NY
Matthew Gellman of Brooklyn, NY
Diane Glancy of Shawnee Mission, KS
Clemonce Heard Jr. of Tulsa, OK
Kirun Kapur of Amesbury, MA
Hannah Perrin King of Brooklyn, NY
Stella Yin-Yin Wong of New York, NY

Nonfiction
Winner:
Jo Anne Bennett of Montgomery, VT for “Jamilla”

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Robert Cochran of Fayetteville, AR for “Spinoza’s Landlady”
Kermit Frazier of Brooklyn, NY for “Snow”
Ember Johnson of Center City, MN for “Serpentine”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Margaret Donovan Bauer of Greenville, NC, for My So-Called Sex Swing and Other Obstacles to Finding Love with a Chemist, Who Reads”
Elizabeth Becker of Manakin Sabot, VA, for “Manny”
Kristin Collier of Minneapolis, MN, for “The Beast That Would Kill Her”
Mojgan Ghazirad of Great Falls, VA, for “The Rooster Tattoo”
Fabienne Josaphat of North Miami Beach, FL, for “The Space Between Us”
Laura Kertz of San Diego, CA, for “Abundance”
Lisa Knopp of Lincoln, NE, for “Your Friend, Carey Dean”
Dan Musgrave of Tulsa, OK, for “In the Petrified Forest”
Joe B. Sills from San Francisco, CA, for “On PICU”
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers of Conway, AR, for “Wound Care”

2017 Contest Winners

Fiction
Winner:
Tamara Titus of Charlotte, NC, for “Exit Seekers”

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
May-lee Chai of San Francisco, CA, for “Life on Mars”
Andrew De Silva of Los Angeles, CA, for “Coach Schwartz”
Denis Wong of Hong Kong, for “The Resurrection of Ma Jun”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Christopher Cappelluti of Brooklyn, NY, for “Rooster”
Amy Feltman of Brooklyn, NY, for “Clean”
Ernest J. Finney of Nevada City, CA, for “The Pickers”
Yuly Restrepo Garcés of Largo, FL, for “The Decedent”
Jorge Guerra Del Cid of Iowa City, IA, for “Sisterhood”
Maureen McGranaghan of Pittsburgh, PA, for “The Painted Wasp”
Jono Naito of Syracuse, NY, for “End of the Day”
Britt Peterson of Washington, D.C., for “The Dreadnought Club”
Christine Vines of Ithaca, NY, for “The Tower of Seneca Plain”
Mark Wagstaff of London, UK, for “No Goodbye to the Weather”

Poetry

Winner:
Meghann Plunkett of Carbondale, IL

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
F. J. Bergmann of Madison, WI
Matty Layne Glasgow of Ames, IA
Chelsea Rathburn of Blairsville, GA

Finalists (alphabetically):
Cortney Lamar Charleston of Jersey City, NJ
Olivia Gatwood of Albuquerque, NM
Mikko Harvey of Brooklyn, NY
Mitchell Jacobs of Lafayette, IN
Jacques J. Rancourt of Redwood City, CA
Paul Tran of St. Louis, MO
Corey Van Landingham of Cheviot, OH
H. R. Webster of Jaffrey, NH
Amie Whittemore of Murfreesboro, TN
Margot Wizansky of Brookline, MA

Nonfiction

Winner:
Rose Smith of Austin, TX, for “Rachel’s Wedding”

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Dawn Davies of Sunrise, FL, for “Arrhythmia”
Sharon F. Doorasamy of Winston-Salem, NC, for “The Meat Must Float”
Jillian Weiss of Portland, OR, for “Awakening to Jake”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Julialicia Case of Decatur, IL, for “The Stories I Do Not Know for Sure”
Madhushree Ghosh of San Diego, CA, for “A Maid’s Tale: A Story of Kaajer Lok (Maidservants) of Home”
Reeves Keyworth of Tucson, AZ, for “Diving into the Surface”
E. J. Levy of Fort Collins, CO, for “The P-Word”
Maria Manuccia of Menlo Park, CA, for “Smoke”
Brad Aaron Modlin of Joplin, MO, for “Everyone from Australia Tells the Truth”
Hannah Louise Poston of Ann Arbor, MI, for “Nothing, Nowhere, Endless”
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers of Conway, AR, for “The Year on Desire”
Lei Wang of Shanghai, China, for “Tiny Rooms”
Bro. Yao of Glenn Dale, MD, for “The Fifty-Four”

2016 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:
Jason Brown of Eugene, OR, for “Instructions to the Living from the Condition of the Dead”

Jason Brown was a Stegner Fellow and Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford University, where he taught as a Jones Lecturer. He now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Oregon.  He has published two books of short stories, Driving the Heart and Other Stories (Norton) and Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work (Open City/Grove Atlantic).  His stories appeared in Best American Short Stories, the Atlantic, Harper’s, TriQuarterly, and other magazines and anthologies. Several of his stories have been performed as part of NPR’s Selected Shorts.

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
May-lee Chai of Wilmington, NC, for “The Witness”
Edward Hamlin of Boulder, CO, for “A Small but Perfect Happiness”
C Pam Zhang of San Francisco, CA, for “And How Much of These Hills Is Gold”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Ed Allen of Vermillion, SD, for “Anorak”
Robert Dorjath of El Dorado Hills, CA, for “A Parable of Fausto Bruzzesi”
Mira Dougherty-Johnson of Southold, NY, for “Coupling Is Not an Art Form, Children Are Not Art Supplies”
Cai Emmons of Eugene, OR, for “Fat”
Ladee Hubbard of New Orleans, LA, for “False Cognates”
Lisa Lenzo of Holland, MI, for “Up in the Air”
Beth Mayer of Lakeville, MN, for “Walter Bombardier Tells a Big Fat Lie”
Maia Morgan of Jersey City, NJ, for “Many Happy Returns”
Jill Rosenberg of Montclair, NJ, for “16 Days of Glory”
Carol Smith of Kirkland, WA, for “Other People’s Stories”

Poetry

Winner:
Karen Skolfield of Amherst, MA

Karen Skolfield’s book Frost in the Low Areas won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry (Zone 3 Press). She’s received fellowships and awards from the Poetry Society of America, New England Public Radio, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and elsewhere. She teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.

Runners-Up (alphabetically):
Nancy Takacs of Wellington, UT
Heather Treseler of Newton, MA
Marcus Wicker of Lansing, MI

Finalists (alphabetically):
John Blair of San Marcos, TX
Tiana Clark of Nashville, TN
Cassandra Cleghorn of Pownal, VT
Cristina Correa of Ithaca, NY
Max Freeman of Brooklyn, NY
Emma Hine of Brooklyn, NY
Carol Quinn of Reisterstown, MD
Alison Rollins of St. Louis, MO
Safiya Sinclair of Lenox, MA
Patti White of Tuscaloosa, AL

Nonfiction

Winner:
Tyler Keevil of Abergavenny, UK, for “Swarf”

Tyler Keevil grew up in Vancouver and in his midtwenties moved to Wales, where he now lives. He is the author of three books, and his short works have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Wales Book of the Year People’s Prize, and the Writers’ Trust of Canada Journey Prize. “Swarf” was developed with the aid of a Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Wales.

Runners-up (alphabetically):
Jamison Rankin of Ladson, SC, for “The Cataclysm of My Mother’s Spine”
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers of Conway, AR, for “The Magic Show”
Robert Wrigley of Moscow, ID, for “Nemerov’s Door”

Finalists (alphabetically):
Caroline Beimford of Fayetteville, AR, for “We Who Are About to Die Salute You”
Geraldine Birch of Cornville, AZ, for “Taking the Census in Rural Arizona”
Jacqueline Feldman of Brooklyn, NY, for “Y.O.L.O.”
Carly Fraysier of Laramie, WY, for “Pork Stock, 2013”
Madhushree Ghosh of San Diego, CA, for “Marriage Proposal for Bachcha Mashi”
C .J. Janovy of Kansas City, MO, for “The Epic Unnecessariness of #wejustneedtopee”
Peter Lang-Stanton of Portland, ME, for “Shine for Me”
Sarah Neidhardt of Portland, OR, for “Up Fox Mountain”
Natasha Orlando of Mishawaka, IN, for “Dim All the Lights”
Maureen Stanton of Georgetown, ME, for “Area Woman, or Netflix is the New Crack”

2015 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Emma Torzs of Minneapolis, MN, for “The Wall”

Emma Törzs was raised in Massachusetts and lives now in Minneapolis, where she teaches, waits tables, and writes other peoples’ online dating profiles. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, the Threepenny Review, the Cincinnati Review, Narrative and Salt Hill, and she is the recipient of a 2015 O. Henry Award and a 2015 Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Montana in 2012.

Finalists:

Becky Adnot-Haynes of Cincinnati, OH, for “What Are You Afraid Of?”
Maria Anderson of Laramie, WY, for “Kalispell”
Cynthia Robinson of Ithaca, NY, for “Maison des Oiseaux”

Poetry

Winner:

Phillip B. Williams of Chicago, IL

Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois, native. He is the author of the book of poems Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books, 2016). He is a Cave Canem graduate and received scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Callaloo, the Kenyon Review, Poetry, the Southern Review, West Branch and others. Phillip received his MFA in Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. He is the coeditor-in-chief of the online journal Vinyl and the Emory University Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry for 2015-17.

Finalists:

Jackie Craven of Schenectady, NY
Allison Davis of Provincetown, MA
Corey Van Landingham of Gettysburg, PA

NONFICTION

Winner:

Genese Grill of Burlington, VT, for “Portals: Cabinets of Curiosity, Reliquaries, and Colonialism”

Genese Grill is an artist, writer, translator and independent scholar living in Burlington, Vermont. She is the author of The World as Metaphor in Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities (Camden House, 2012) and translator of Robert Musil’s Thought Flights (Contra Mundum Press, 2015). Her essays and translations have been published in the Georgia Review, Numero Cinq, Fiction and Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics. She is grateful to Rainer J. Hanshe, her friend and editor at Contra Mundum, for introducing her to Francine and Horst of the Maison Gai Saber, without whom this essay would not have been written.

Finalists:

John W. Evans of Mountain View, CA, for “The Polish Prince”
Dionne Irving of South Bend, IN, for “Treading Water”
Dan Musgrave of St. Louis, MO, for “Worry”

2014 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Rachel Swearingen of Minneapolis, Minnesota, for “How to Walk on Water”

Swearingen’s stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Agni, American Short Fiction, Witness, and elsewhere. Her work has garnered several prizes, including a 2012 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award and the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University, and has taught creative writing and American literature at WMU and Kalamazoo College. Visit her online at rachelswearingen.com.

Finalists:

Dana Fitz Gale of Missoula, Montana, for “Leah, Lamb”

Gale is a recent winner of the New Letters Prize for Fiction, the Writers at Work fiction fellowship, the Arts & Letters Fiction Award, and the Charles Johnson Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, New Letters, Quarterly West, Mid-American Review, Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, Tampa Review, and New South, among other places. Visit her online at danafitzgale.com.

Edward Hamlin of Boulder, Colorado, for “Indígena”

Hamlin is the winner of the 2015 Iowa Short Fiction Prize and the 2013 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. Since 2013 he’s been a finalist or runner-up for the Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Prize, Missouri Review Editors’ Prize, Narrative Story Prize, Myerson Fiction Prize, Press 53 Fiction Award, Mary McCarthy Award, Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren and Tupelo Quarterly Fiction Open awards.

Robin Romm of Portland, Oregon, for “What to Expect”

Romm is the author of two books, the story collection The Mother Garden and the memoir The Mercy Papers.” Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, O Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, Narrative, The Sun, Threepenny Review, One Story, Antioch Review, Gulf Coast and Salon. She teaches in the low-residency MFA program for Writers at Warren Wilson.

Poetry

Winner:

Alexandra Teague of Moscow, Idaho

Teague’s first book, Mortal Geography, won Persea Books’ 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and the 2010 California Book Award; her second book, The Wise and Foolish Builders, is forthcoming from Persea this April. Her work has also appeared in The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at University of Idaho and an editor for Broadsided Press.

Finalists:

Jennifer Barber of Brookline, Massachusetts

Barber’s poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Upstreet, AGNI, and elsewhere.

Miriam Bird Greenberg of Berkeley, California

Greenberg has held fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Poetry Foundation, the NEA, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Colorado Review, and online at Verse Daily. She is the author of two chapbooks: All night in the new country (Sixteen Rivers Press) and Pact-Blood, Fever Grass (Ricochet Editions).

Phillip B. Williams of Chicago, Illinois

Williams is the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc., 2011) and Burn (YesYes Books, 2013). He is a Cave Canem graduate and the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry. His poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Kenyon Review Online, The Southern Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, West Branch, Blackbird and others.

Essay

Winner:

Andrew Cohen of Portland, Oregon, for “Ronaldo”

Cohen is an Instructor of English at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. His essays have appeared in Antioch Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Normal School, North American Review and elsewhere. Two of his essays have also been selected as “Notable” by the Best American Essay Series.

Finalists:

Nicole Banas of Devon, Pennsylvania, for “Rash”

Banas’s short stories have previously appeared in journals including South Dakota Review and Roanoke Review. This is her first published essay.

Nynke Passi of Fairfield, Iowa, for “Oom Ealse and the Swan”

Passi was born and raised in the Netherlands. She received her graduate degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University and has been teaching undergraduate and graduate creative writing in the Midwest for the past fifteen years. Together with Rustin Larson and Christine Schrum, she edited the poetry collection Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.

Jeff Wasserboehr of Leverett, Massachusetts, for “Possess Stonewall”

Wasserboehr’s work has appeared in the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Little Fiction, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Passages North, among many others. He is a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

2013 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Melissa Yancy of Los Angeles, California, for “Consider This Case”

Yancy is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in One Story, Meridian, The Journal, Barrelhouse, American Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has worked in the non-profit sector for the last ten years. Visit her at melissayancy.com.

Finalists:

Sean Adams of Seattle, Washington, for “The Astronaut Who Forgot”

Adams’s work has recently appeared on American Review, Hobart, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Amanda Harris of New York, New York, for “Isle au Haut”

Harris received her MFA from The New School, and recently won the 2013 Normal Prize; her story will be published in the fall issue of The Normal School. She is a contributing editor for The Readers Exchange.

Rachel Unkefer of Charlottesville, Virginia, for “Charcoal”

Unkefer is the president and founding member of WriterHouse, a non-profit writing community. Her work has appeared in Gingko Tree Review, Atticus Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Visit her online at rachelunkefer.com

Poetry

Winner:

Kai Carlson-Wee of San Francisco, California

Carlson-Wee grew up on the Minnesota prairie. He received his BA in English from the University of Minnesota and his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has appeared in Linebreak, Forklift Ohio, Many Mountains Moving, and the Best New Poets series. He lives in San Francisco.

Finalists:

Diane Seuss of Kalamazoo, Michigan

Seuss is Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at Kalamazoo College.  Her poems have appeared in The Georgia ReviewBlackbirdNorth American Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among many others. Her latest collection of poetry is Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), which received the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry.

Soledad Caballero of Meadville, Pennsylvania

Caballero is an associate professor of English at Allegheny College. She is co-editor of Journal of a Voyage to Brazil (1824) available from Parlor Press’s Travel Writing Series.

Mark Wagenaar of Denton, Texas

Wagenaar is the author of Voodoo Inverso, winner of the Felix Pollack Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in such journals as New England Review, Subtropics, Southern Review, American Literary Review, and Antioch Review, among many others.

Essay

Winner:

David Zoby of Casper, Wyoming, for “Café Misfit”

Zoby has published poems in 64 Magazine, The New Virginia Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Georgia State Review, Blackbird, South Dakota Review and others. He has also published fishing and hunting articles in American Angler, Fish Alaska, Retriever Journal and Bowhunter Magazine. He is the chair of the English Department at Casper College.

Finalists:

Jill N. Kandel of South Moorhead, Minnesota, for “Paying the Piper”

Kandel’s work is included in Best Spiritual Writing 2012, and Becoming, What Makes a Woman. Her essays have been published in journals such as River Teeth, Gettysburg Review, Brevity, and Image. She recently finished a memoir, A Sliver of Shade: Six Years in an African Village.

Cory Brown of Ithaca, New York, for “Compliance”

Brown’s poems have appeared in Bomb, The Chattahoochee Review, The Fiddlehead, West Branch, Nimrod International, Northwest Review, and Postmodern Culture, among others. He has also published two essays on philosophy and literary theory, one scholarly (“Notes on the Role of the Arts in a Technocratic Culture”) and the other meditative and humorous (“On Thinking”).

Patricia Bjorklund of Wilmington, North Carolina, for “Champs and Chumps”

Bjorklund earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from UNC Wilmington, where she won the 2008 Distinguished Dissertation Award in Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Prime Numbers Magazine, Palooka, Sou’wester, Connecticut Review, and Post Road, among many others. Visit her online at patriciabjorklund.com.

2012 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Rachel Yoder of Iowa City, IA for “The blood was the mountain and the mountain was the bear”

Yoder earned an MFA in Fiction from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her work has appeared in Bat City Review, Hobart, The Rumpus, and The Sun, among many others. She is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process and serves as Senior Editor for Defunct Magazine. Visit her online at racheljyoder.com

Finalists:

Cara Adams of Baton Rouge, LA, for “The Sea Latch”

Adams’s work has appeared in many journals, including Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, and The Sun. She serves as fiction and non-fiction editor of The Southern Review.

Jennifer S. Davis of Baton Rouge, LA, for “The Winnowing of Henry Jenkins”

Davis is the author of two story collections, Her Kind of Want (Iowa Prize for Short Fiction, 2002) and Our Former Lives in Art (Random House, 2007), which was selected by Barnes and Noble for their Discover Great New Writers series.  Her stories have been published in such journals as The Paris Review, One Story, and Oxford American.

Emma Törzs of Missoula, MT for “Patchwork Elephant”

Törzs received her MFA from the University of Montana. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Narrative Magazine, Hobart, and Ploughshares, among many others. Visit her online at emmaemmaemma.com

Poetry

Winner:

Katie Bickham of Shreveport, LA

Bickham is a student in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Maine.

Finalists:

Andrew P. Grace of Gambier, OH

Grace is the author of four books of poetry, most recently the book-length poem Sancta (Ahsahta Press, 2012). He is currently pursuing his doctorate degree at the University of Cincinnati. Visit him online at andrewpgrace.com

Dan O’Brien of Santa Monica, CA

O’Brien’s poetry and fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. His play about war reporter Paul Watson, The Body of an American, is the winner of the 2011 L. Arnold Weissberger Award and premiered at Portland Center Stage in 2012. He has served as a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, the inaugural Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and twice as the Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-residence at Sewanee.

Diane K. Seuss of Kalamazoo, MI

Seuss is Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at Kalamazoo College.  Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Blackbird, North American Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among many others. Her latest collection of poetry is Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), which received the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry.

Essay

Winner:

Terry Ann  Thaxton of Winter Springs, FL, for “Delusions of Grandeur”

Thaxton is the author of the poetry collection Getaway Girl (Salt Publishing, 2011). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Connecticut Review, Comstock Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review,  and West Branch, among many others. She is Associate Professor of English at UCF where she founded and directs the Literary Arts Partnership. Visit her online at terryannthaxton.com

Finalists:

Jennifer Anderson of Lewiston, ID for “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie”

Anderson teaches English at Lewis-Clark State College. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Open Spaces Quarterly, and Cimarron Review.

Kathleen Spivack of Watertown, MA, for “Write What You Know”

Spivack is the author of eight books, most recently With Robert Lowell and His Circle (University Press of New England, 2012)Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, and The Paris Review, among many others. Visit her online at kathleenspivack.com

Brad Wetherell of Ann Arbor, MI, for “A Clean Break”

Wetherell teaches at the University of Michigan, where he received his MFA. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, Fiction Writers Review and Eclectica. He is currently working on a novel.

2011 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Yuko Sakata of Madison, WI for “Unintended”

Sakata is an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and has previously won the August Derleth Prize and a MacDowell Fellowship. Sakata also is a dancer and translator. “Unintended” is her first published story.

Finalists:

Jessica F. Kane of New York, NY, for “The Essentials of Acceleration”

Kane is the author of the short story collection, Bending Heaven (Counterpoint, 2002), and a novel, The Report (Graywolf Press, 2010). Her stories have been presented on BBC Radio 4 and published in Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, Narrative, and Granta.com. A new short story collection is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in January 2013. Visit her online at jessicafranciskane.com

Thomas Pierce of Charlottesville, VA, for “Grasshopper Kings”

Pierce grew up in South Carolina. He is currently a Henry Hoyns/Poe-Faulkner Fellow in the MFA fiction program at the University of Virginia, where he is working on a collection of short stories.

Bart Skarzynski of Columbus, OH for “Project X”

Skarzynski was born in Poland and raised in Montreal. For the past sixteen years, he’s been living, studying and working in the United States. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Ohio State University. “Project X” is his first published story.

Poetry

Winner:

David Kirby of Tallahassee, FL

Kirby has most recently published a book of poetry titled “Talking About Movies with Jesus.” He has published other books of poetry as well and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. Kirby is a professor of English at Florida State University. Visit him online at davidkirby.com

Finalists:

Steve Gehrke of Reno, NV

Steve Gehrke’s third book of poetry, Michelangelo’s Seizure, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published in 2007. His second book, The Pyramids of Malpighi, won the Philip Levine Prize. He teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Cynthia Marie Hoffman of Madison, WI

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of Sightseer, winner of the 2010 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in Fence, Open City, Crab Orchard Review, and Best New Poets 2005, and has appeared as an intro feature in Pleiades and as a featured chapbook in Mid-American Review. She works at an electrical engineering firm in Madison, WI, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Visit her online at cynthiamariehoffman.com

Mark Wunderlich of Catskill, NY

Wunderlich is the author of two collections of poetry: The Anchorage (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) and Voluntary Servitude (Graywolf Press, 2004). He is currently a professor of literature at Bennington College, where he has taught since 2004. His third collection, The Earth Avails, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. He lives in New York’s Hudson River Valley.

Essay

Winner:

Peter Selgin of Winter Park, FL, for “The Kuhreihen Melody”

Selgin recently completed a novel, “The Water Master,” which won the Pirate’s Alley/William Faulkner Society Award for best novel. He teaches at Antioch University and is also a visiting professor of creative writing at Rollins College. Visit him online at peterselgin.com

Finalists:

May-Lee Chai of San Francisco, CA, for “The Blue Boot”

Chai is the author of six books and a recipient of an NEA grant for Literature. In addition to her books, she has published numerous short stories and essays in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Zyzzyva, The Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine, The North American Review, the Missouri Review, and Seventeen. Visit her online at may-leechai.com

Mako Yoshikawa of Cambridge, MA, for “My Father’s Women”

Yoshikawa’s is the author of two novels: One Hundred and One Ways and Once Removed. She attended Columbia University, received a Masters in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama at Lincoln College, Oxford, and has a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She lives in the Boston area and is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. Visit her online at makoyoshikawa.com

Dave Zoby of Casper, WY, for “Leftovers, 1993”

Zoby has published poems in 64 Magazine, The New Virginia Review, The Southern Poetry Review, Georgia State Review, Blackbird, South Dakota Review, and others. Currently, he is the chair of the English Department at Casper College.

2010 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Anna Solomon of Providence, Rhode Island for her story “The Long Net”

Solomon’s first novel, The Little Bride, has just been released by Riverhead. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Georgia Review, One Story, Harvard Review, Shenandoah, The Puschart Prize XXXII Anthology and elsewhere. Visit her online at annasolomon.com

Finalists:

Jennifer DuBois of Palo Alto, California for her story “The City of the Dead”

duBois is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a 2009-2011 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Playboy, The Kenyon Review, The Florida Review, The South Carolina Review, and Northwest Review. Her fisrt novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, will be published by Random House in spring 2012. Visit her online at jennifer-dubois.com

Erin Flanagan of Dayton, Ohio for her story “The Wrong Man”

Flanagan is the author of the short story collection The Usual Mistakes, published as part of the Flyover Fiction Series by the University of Nebraska Press. She is an associate professor at Wright State University.

Poetry

Winner:

George Looney of Erie, Pennsylvania

Looney’s most recent book is Open Between Us (Turning Point, 2010). His A Short Bestiary of Love and Madness is due from Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2011. His work has been recognized with an individual artist’s fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two grants from the Ohio Arts Council, and one from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He teaches at Penn State Erie, where he is editor-in-chief of the international literary journal Lake Effect.

Finalists:

Nadine Meyer of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Meyer’s first book of poems, The Anatomy Theater, won the National Poetry Series and was published by HarperCollins in 2006. Her poems have won the New Letters Prize for Poetry as well as a Pushcart Prize. New poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Southern Review, Southwest Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and Boulevard.

Diane Seuss of Kalamazoo, MI

Seuss’s most recent collection of poems, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, was the recipient of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Brevity, Able MuseValparaiso Poetry Review, and Blackbird. She is writer-in-residence at Kalamazoo College.

Josh Booton of Austin, TX

Booton is a James A. Michener Fellow in poetry at the University of Texas-Austin. His poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Poetry Northwest, and the Grove Review. He works as a pediatric speech-language pathologist.

Essay

Winner:

John Hales of Fresno, California for his essay “Helpline”

Hales is the author of Shooting Polaris: A Personal Survey in the American West (University of Missouri Press) and his essays have appeared in journals and anthologies including the Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Southern Review, Hudson Review, Ascent and On Nature: Great Writers on the Great Outdoors. His writing has been cited numerous times in Best American Essays and Best American Science and Nature Writing. He teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno.

Finalists:

Peter Selgin of Canton, New York for his essay “Titanic Obsessions”

Selgin is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, and Life Goes to the Movies, a novel, as well as two books on writing craft, By Cunning & Craftand 179 Ways to Save a Novel: Matters of Vital Concern to Fiction Writers, just out from Writers Digest Books. Confessions of a Left-Handed Man, a memoir in essays whose title essay was included in Best American Essays 2006, will be published by University of Iowa Press/Sightline Books in 2011. He is currently Viebranz Distinguished Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at St. Lawrence University. Visit him online at peterselgin.com

Doug Hunt of Columbia, Missouri for his essay “Names”

Hunt’s work was recognized with the Richard J. Margolis Award, given annually to a “journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice.” His essay on the 1923 lynching of James Scott was listed as “notable” in Best American Essays for 2004.

Molly Schultz of Moscow, Idaho for her essay “On Loneliness”

Schultz is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing at the University of Idaho. Her essay “Litany of My Mother” won the 2010 prize for nonfiction from Black Warrior Review. Her work has also appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly. Schultz is a native of Chicago.

 

2009 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Fiona McFarlane of Austin, Texas for her story “Exotic Animal Medicine”

McFarlane was born in Sydney, Australia. She has a BA from Sydney University and a PhD from Cambridge University and is currently an MFA candidate at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown and Phillips Exeter Academy. Her work has been published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Island and Southerly.

Finalists:

Diane Simmons of New York, New York for her story “Yukon River”

Diane Simmons has published short fiction in numerous journals, including Northwest Review, Fiction, Green Mountains Review and Blood Orange Review with new work forthcoming in Beloit Fiction Journal. Her novel, Dreams Like Thunder (Story Line Press) won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction.

Mai-Lee Chai of San Francisco, California for her story “Tomorrow in Shanghai”

Chai is the author of six books and a recipient of an NEA grant for Literature. While climbing mountains looking for Buddhist statues and temples, she first learned of China’s rural AIDS crisis. As a result, she began writing her new novel,  The Blood Merchant, which is based on characters from “Tomorrow in Shanghai.”

Siobhan Fallon of Monterey, California for her story “Remission”

Fallon lived at Fort Hood while her husband was deployed to Iraq for two tours of duty. She earned her MFA at the New School in New York City and now lives with her family near the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan. Visit her online at siobhanfallon.com

Poetry

Winner:

Christina Hutchins of Albany, California

Hutchins’s work appears in Alehouse, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, the Southern Review and Women’s Review of Books. She has received two Barbara Deming Poetry Awards and won the Villa Montalvo Poetry Prize. Sixteen Rivers Press will publish The Stranger Dissolves in early 2011. She is the Poet Laureate of Albany, California.

Finalists:

Sarah Blackman of Greenville, South Carolina

Blackman is the director of creative writing at the Fine Arts Center, a public arts high school in Greenville, South Carolina. Her writing has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Versal and Forklift, Ohio among others. Her fiction chapbook Such a Thing as America is available from the Burnside Review.

Joseph Fasano of Middletown, New York

Fasano’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, RATTLE, The Western Humanities Review, and other journals. He won the 2008 RATTLE Poetry Prize, he was a runner-up in the 2008 Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Brian Brodeur of Fairfax, Virginia 

Brodeur is the author of Other Latitudes (2008), winner of the University of Akron Press’s 2007 Akron Poetry Prize, and So the Night Cannot Go on Without Us (2007), which won the Fall 2006 White Eagle Coffee Store Poetry Chapbook Award. Recent poems and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Gettysburg Review, Many Mountains Moving, Margie and others. He also maintains the blog “How a Poem Happens.”

Essay

Winner:

Joseph Murtagh of Trumansberg, New York for his essay “A Hive of Mysterious Danger”

Murtagh received his PhD in English from Cornell University in August 2009. He currently teaches at Ithaca College. He was the winner of the 2004 Creative Nonfiction Award from the Mid-American Review. From May 2008 to September 2009 he worked as an organizer for the Working Families Party, with whom he assisted in the 2008 Democratic takeover of the New York State Senate, an experience he’s writing about in a book project titled Campaign Days.

Finalists:

Jonathan Starke of Fort Collins, Colorado for his essay “What Happens to Heroes”

Starke is a native of Iowa and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he is working toward an MFA in creative writing at Colorado State University. He has an essay appearing in Fourth Genre and is currently working on a memoir about bodybuilding, a collection of short stories and a collection of personal essays.

Rachel Riederer of Brooklyn, New York for her essay “Patient”

Riederer teaches academic writing at Columbia University, where she was the 2008-2009  nonfiction editor of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. She is a contributor to the science section of The Faster Times and is at work on a book about the environmental disasters and management of Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake and source of the White Nile.

David Bahr of New York, New York for his essay “Bootstrapped”

Bahr’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Times Book Review, GQ, The Village Voice, New York, Spin, Time Out New York, Poets & Writers, Publishers’ Weekly, The Advocate and other publications. An autobiographical essay, “No Matter What Happens,” appears in the anthology From Boys To Men (Carroll & Graf; 2006), an earlier published version of which was cited by Bob Atwan, series editor of Best American Essays (Houghton Mifflin), as a notable essay of 2004. He has an MA in English, teaches literature at The City University of New York and has been a writing fellow at Yaddo.

 

2008 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Roy Kesey of North Syracuse, New York for his story “Double Fish.”

Kesey is the author of three books: a novella, Nothing in the World (Dzanc Books); a story collection, All Over (Dzanc Books); and Nanjing: A Cultural and Historical Guide for Travelers (Atomic Press). His work has appeared in more than sixty magazines and in several anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology, and New Sudden Fiction. Visit him online at roykesey.com

Finalists:

Jennifer Arnspiger of San Diego, California for her story “Foie Gras”

Mike Murray of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for his story “The Underwater Man”

Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner of Concrete, Washington for his story “Jack and His Disappearing Act”

Van Wagoner’s first novel, Dancing Naked (Signature Books, 1999), was awarded the Utah Center for the Book’s Utah Book Award and the Utah Arts Council’s Publication Prize. His short stories have appeared in literary periodicals and anthologies, including The Best of Writers at Work and In Our Lovely Deseret, and have been selected for various awards, including Carolina Quarterly’s Charles B. Wood Award for Distinguished Writing, Shenandoah’s Jeanne Charpiot Goodheart Award for Fiction, Sunstone’s Brookie and D.K. Brown Memorial Fiction Award, and Weber Studies’ Dr. O. Marvin Lewis Award for Best Fiction, 1994-1997.

Poetry

Winner:

Frannie Lindsay of Belmont, Massachusetts

Lindsay is the author of three collections of poetry: Mayweed (The Word Works, 2009); Lamb (Perugia Press, 2006); and Where She Always Was (Utah State University Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Yale Review, Black Warrior Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Southern Humanities Review, Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Field, Salamander, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry International, Harvard Review, Poetry East, Tampa Review, Hunger Mountain, and many other journals. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is also a classical pianist. Visit her online at frannielindsay.com

Finalists:

Matthew Fluharty of St. Louis, Missouri

Jennifer Grotz of Greensboro, North Carolina

Christina Hutchins of Albany, California

Nonfiction

Winner:

Deborah Thompson of Fort Collins, Colorado for her essay “What’s the Matter with Houdini”

Thompson is an associate professor of English at Colorado State University and a member of the Slow Sand Writers Society, whose members she wishes to thank for their help with this essay. Living in the foothills of Colorado, she now shares her home with four dogs and a cat.

Finalists:

Gail Kezer Lowe of Brunswick, Maine for her essay “Around the Rosy”

David MacLean of Houston, Texas for his essay “The Answer to the Riddle is Me”

Robert Rebein of Indianapolis, Indiana for his essay “The Sisyphus of the Plains”

2007 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Otis Haschemeyer of Knoxville, TN for his story “The Fantome of Fatma”

Finalists:

Anna Solomon of New York, NY for her story “The Lobster Mafia Story”

Cynthia Morrison Phoel of Newton Highlands, MA for “Never Trust a Man Who . . .”

Natalie Sears of New York, NY for her story “Arctic Summer”

Poetry

Winner:

Jude Nutter of Edina, MN

Finalists:

Christina Hutchins of Albany, CA

Paisley Rekdal of Salt Lake City, UT

Scott Coffel of Iowa City, IA

Nonfiction

Winner:

Robert Kimber of Temple, ME for his essay “Big Jim”

Finalists:

Anne Meisenzahl of Tallahassee, FL for her essay “Thank You and Good-bye: A Meditation on My Breasts”

Elizabeth Logan Harris of New York, NY for her essay “How Come?”

John Stazinksi of Cambridge, MA for his essay “Lesson in Amateur Stalking”

2006 Contest Winners

Fiction

Winner:

Jacob M. Appel of New York, NY for his story “Creve Coeur”

Finalists:

Jennine Capó Crucet of Champaign, IL for her story “And in the Morning, Work”

Erica Debeljak of Evanston, IL for her story “Biology”

Elliott Holt of Brooklyn, NY for his story “Fem Care”

Poetry

Winner:

Jonathan Fink of Pensacola, FL

Finalists:

Adam Day of Brooklyn, NY

Ann Fisher-Wirth of Oxford, MS

Jane Springer of Tallahassee, FL

Nonfiction

Winner:

Cynthia Coffel of Iowa City, IA for her essay “Letters to David”

Finalists:

Tom Carlson of Memphis, TN for his essay “Mr. Tilley and his Twin (Neon Brothers) Wink and Grin”

John Fanestil for his essay “The Freying of the Memoir”

John Price of Council Bluffs, IA for his essay “Dave and the Devil”