Winner “Come Tomorrow” by Nina Sudhakar From judge Kirstin Valdez Quade: When a young photographer’s scooter breaks down in a remote village near her grandmother’s city, she finds the village…
The two white-haired boys vanished from their house on a Monday afternoon. No forced entry, no evidence of foul play, and nothing missing from their room to suggest they’d…
They’re holding the needles poised at the tips of their noses. Cross-eyed with nervous concentration, focusing on the point, the sharp end, the sliver of metal all set to…
open pit by Jose Antonio Villarán (Counterpath Press, 2022). What is this? A play? A poem? A polemic? Yes. Jose Antonio Villarán’s open pit: a story about morococha…
Dereliction by Gabrielle Octavia Rucker (The Song Cave, 2023). a couple other versions of me sharing cognac, shooting dark brown out crystalline pteropods. Gabrielle Octavia Rucker’s Dereliction is…
When Sam’s parents had taken him to see the last remaining polar bear, they’d sweated in line for hours. Lizzie had been there, too. In the parking lot their…
If men had wings, we would hear nothing but their beating. Some would learn how to tune out the takeoffs, while others would start their day by donning a…
The hog farmer is grindstone apples, seek-no-furthers, he is primrose balm, mayhaw and sorrel and scuppernong butters, he is carved corn-knife handles and stocking stretchers and tiny mounted soldiers:…
i. Moss creeps up the massive white oak, gentling its craggy bark. This centenarian protects our farmhouse from summer’s glare. A black snake once lived beneath its gnarliest root,…
At high tide the water spewed against the toothy outcrops and matted scrubs of the low cliff around the inlet, and not for the first time the General was…