Category: 2021 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=”] See what things have come to? See? Yesterday, I very nearly fell asleep in the grocery line while waiting to buy you a ham.* You don’t like ham. Neither do I. But it’s the tradition. Every year, the ham “provokes”… Continue reading My Wish for You in the Land of the Dead: a Cuban Sandwich
by Leslie Blanco

Winner, Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction

[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=”] Dion moved back to the neighborhood. It defied the change characterizing the rest of the city: new developments, young professionals, coffee shops, and bars—an evaporation, like a puddle retreating into itself, then into nothingness, of crime. But the neighborhood was… Continue reading The Oedipal Myth: a Retelling
by Jeffrey Rapaport

Runner-Up, Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction

[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=”] I watched my husband’s death on livestream. A minute before impact, he held the camera at arm’s length, waved, and stuck out his tongue. He flipped the bird. “Today you fly with me.” He fastened the GoPro back on his… Continue reading Today You Fly with Me
by Marina Clementi

Honorable Mention, Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction

[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=”] stand still, then spin in small circles. eyes closed, mouth opened, window cracked. let water pool in your mouth, push it back out. unclench your fists. run your tongue over your teeth. step out of the glass, in front of… Continue reading In the Shower, When Your Marriage is Finally Over
by Erin Rose Coffin

Winner, 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=”] I met a woman who’d been struck by lightning. She held herself like a firefly when she told me. That’s something I thought. She was now her own gold. I was pregnant then, fourth boy, more full moon than ever.… Continue reading Grief Sestina
by Sunni Brown Wilkinson

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=”] A gang of turkeys has settled in the yard. They’re disagreeable, eating my new grass seed. Ugh the big unbalanced bodies and skinny necks with wattles, caruncles, snoods. Spurred shanks and awful twisting feet. Now a limping jenny goes fancy-footing… Continue reading Quantum Entanglement
by Leslie Williams

Honorable Mention, 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=”] I am on top of a truly beautiful woman. I’ll call her Renée. Step back: we’re in her room, on her bed. I’m still wearing my men’s XL winter coat, all ready to walk out into the Connecticut winter. The… Continue reading What You Wanted from Me I Imagined
by Nikita Ladd

Winner, 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=”] [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=”] [/av_one_half] [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=”]

[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=”] Every school morning, my father wakes me the same way: he yanks open my blinds, slaps his hands together, and says, “Boker tov, beautiful daughter. Time to rise and serve your Creator.”  Once upon a time, I didn’t need wake-up… Continue reading My Father’s Messiah
by Evelyn Krieger

First Place, Katherine Paterson Prize, Young Adult Category

[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=”] Fireflies die when they are two months old. They spend those two months lighting up hot summer nights, sometimes flickering in a special way to attract a mate, sometimes just glinting in the dark like earth-fallen stars. The fireflies were… Continue reading What Olivia Knew
by Emily Young

First Place, Katherine Paterson Prize, Middle Grade Category

[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 particles of matter are subject to strange vicissitudes.  Every atom has its peculiar history”  – John Cargill Brough Here is a cantaloupe.  Cut it open for that  pearly orangepink with a slash  of vibrant green.  Could you have guessed… Continue reading An Atom in Space. A Cantaloupe.
by Jen Breach

First Place, Katherine Paterson Prize, Picture Book Category

[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=”] Ottavia, don’t be scared. You’ll never have less of yourself than you have right now. Don’t fear. Your name is only your name until you make up its’ meaning. Like how the sun and your spine become the same, whenever… Continue reading Someday I’ll Love Ottavia Paluch
by Ottavia Paluch

Winner, International Young Writers 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=”] I tighten my body on the rain-softened sidewalk outside our home, waiting for my mother to pick me up and drive me to school. The wide street in front of me is quiet, covered in a thin layer of fog;… Continue reading Hunger
by Sarah Fathima Mohammed

Runner-Up, International Young Writers Prize