Category: 2019 Contest Winners

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Abuela screams my name nightly. BEMBÉ! BEMBÉ! BEMBÉ! She calls me a descarada: a short skirt, stubby legged whore who wears hoops the size of her padre’s wagon wheel. She asks me how fat the ox is, pulling at my… Continue reading Beautiful Bembé
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley

First Place, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize

Son of Chuquín I often wonder who would I be without this stubborn, perennial image—my mother in bed in the dark, lying like a corpse, only her eyes and her mouth moving, talking to me as if reminiscing and at the same time prescribing a course for my life, anticipating perhaps losing me sooner rather… Continue reading The Anglo-Saxon Conspiracy
Willy Lizárraga

Runner Up, Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Sometimes you picture what it must be like on Pluto. You picture the stillness. You picture that special kind of silence that pounds beyond the ears, into the airways, past the base of the throat—a choking kind of silence. You… Continue reading Sunrise on Pluto
Arielle Schussler

First Place, Creative Nonfiction Prize

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] The four of us kids crowd into the green Chevy Impala that looks and moves like an alligator. At three years old, I am small enough to fit on Ma’s lap in the front. My sister Xuan gets a window seat in… Continue reading The Alligator
Katie Trang Quach

Runner-Up, Creative Nonfiction Prize

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Cathedrals [av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Tío, the desert is a skin too.          It peels off just like anything else.          I’d like to think you loved   nopales—that you went to market,… Continue reading Three Poems
Daniel Arias Gómez

First Place, Ruth Stone Poetry Prize

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] There are days I live named not good for anybody. A single misstep shakes awake the whole sleeping house. I stand in front of a mirror that’s upside-down, do my hair around the crack in the well of my worst… Continue reading Dizzy // House
Hannah Erickson

Runner-Up, Ruth Stone Poetry Prize

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] Chapter 1 Larken brought up the mound of dough and slammed it down with a thwap, flour billowing before her. She smacked her hand down again and again, air bubbles exploding beneath her palms. Each time she brought her hand… Continue reading Autumnal Tithe
Hannah Parker

Overall First Place, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] The cave remembers. More than remembers, the cave sees far past the surface under which she sleeps. Her tributaries of tunnels, like hollow fingers, spread underground for hundreds of miles. They touch acre after acre, town after town, and county… Continue reading The Cave Sighs
Ellen Goff

Young Adult Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] One Santa Ynez Beach, California 1976 Mandalay Bates skipped across the sidewalk, so white hot, it scorched her sandals. Sun blistered the eucalyptus trees, setting their leaves a-shiver. The Santa Anas gushed through Mandalay’s hair. They weren’t playing, these winds.… Continue reading When Everything Was Whiskey Creek
Anna Craig

Middle Grade Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

Dedicated to the curiosity and wonder of my daughters. This story was born out of a question from my seven-year-old, Zara. She asked, “Why does the Ratoncito come to our house and not the Tooth Fairy?” It begins with magic and love, with hope and wonder … Hundreds of years ago, when girls and boys… Continue reading El Ratoncito (The Mexican mouse that became a fairy for a night)
Adriana Martinez

Picture Book Winner, Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing

[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”] “In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” —Toni Morrison   On the first-grade attendance sheet, Jessica’s legal name is the same as her Korean one, and Mrs. Powell stumbles. Min see oh? Min ee soh? Laughter… Continue reading Hyphe(nation)
by Kaylee Y. Jeong

International Young Writers Prize for High School-Aged Writers