I swim most days after work, at first because Prescription-Happy Hindu Granny told me to, but now I look forward to it. The water has become my respite, the soft aqua antidote to my other life, the noisy Kodachrome one, where staying afloat requires more than the flimsy raft with which I’ve been equipped.
Category: 2015 Contest Winners
Things I think about while swimming.
The 4-D Dog
by April Kelly
Honorable Mention, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize
Considering the number of dog owners in America, it is safe to speculate that on any given day a small percentage of the population wakes to find an unpleasant mess on the floor, as did Dylan Carter one Thursday in March. The difference between him and the others who made such a discovery that morning is Dylan did not own a dog.
Heliciculture
by Lisa Nikolidakis
Runner-Up, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize
Ask anyone in Greece and they will tell you the same: our snails are best. From all over they come to our village in Crete to pluck the mollusks from their swirling shells and feel the soft dissolve against their tongues.
Random Sample
by Alan Sincic
Honorable Mention, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize
So not but a week after the funeral and this thing, this crazy thing that happens. I’m trekking through Midtown – no temp job that day – past CBS Headquarters. You know, Black Rock. You’ve seen the pictures: black as a burnt marshmallow, thirty-eight floors of granite, kind of a cross between the Tower of… Continue reading Random Sample
by Alan Sincic
Honorable Mention, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize
Theories
by B. Boyer-White
Honorable Mention, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize
I have a mouthful of hot tea when it hits. A boom in the walls like a wrecking ball blow, then a whole series of them, pounding. Nothing breaks but the windows snake-rattle in their frames.
Milk
Julie Cadwallader Staub
Winner, Ruth Stone Poetry Prize
This goat kicked me only once,
as if to say she knows
I’m an amateur
Pink
by Kari Smith
Runner-Up, Ruth Stone Poetry Prize
like chrysanthemums, like tulips;
like the droopy pink heads of peonies
that filled our kitchen windowsill, spilling
over mason jars and plastic cups…
Time Under a Bridge
by Lisa Breger
Runner-Up, Ruth Stone Poetry Prize
I don’t want to leave this world:
My friends are in it, and there’s so much beauty.
Tilt-A-Whirl
by Rachel Furey
Overall First Place, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
It’s just you in the Tilt-A-Whirl cart until Jimmy Miller slips in beside you. He reeks of cigarette smoke, and you want to grind an elbow into his stomach and tell him to find another cart.
The Lies And Illusions Of Lucy Sparrow
by Sharry Wright
Young Adult Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
Today is the day my new life begins. One hundred and twenty-three days since we sailed from New York harbor bound for San Francisco. Seventy-one days since I buried Mother at sea.
Banu the Builder
by Mathangi Subramanian
Middle-Grade Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
See her? That one, there. The one that’s always looking up up up at the tops of things? Falls in every crack in the sidewalk? Always forgetting that she’s on the ground?
That’s Banu. Banu, who is not like the rest of us.
Anglerfish: the Black Devil of the Deep
by E. M. Alexander
Picture Book Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
Far, far below the ocean’s surface, where no trace of light can be seen, the deep-sea Angler fish has made her home.
In the Middle of the Night
by Catey Miller
Honorable Mention, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
Twenty-one days ago, exactly one month before Layla and I were set to move to different states for different colleges, I was lying on the couch in Layla’s family’s den, pretending to be asleep while she and her mom, Ellen, had a loud fight.
Paddy Cats
by Helen Kampion
Honorable Mention, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
Toshiko lived in a small village in Japan where the rice grew in rows as straight as chopsticks. Every day on her way to the rice paddies, Toshiko greeted the stray cats and scratched their backs.
Attack of the Giant Meatball!
by Callie C. Miller
Honorable Mention, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Literature
When a giant meatball terrorizes the American Moon colony, twelve-year-old Jupiter and his best friend, Kraig, are recruited by Apollo Command to help track down the menace and take it out.