Grand Prize

Alison Luterman, “Charring Lemons” (non-rhyming poetry). Read the winning poem here.

Children’s/Young Adult Fiction

1. “The Order of Ordinaries” by Cathy Lepik
2. “Rowan’s Greatest Hits” by Akash Arun Kumar Soumya
3. “Autumn Lies” by Cathryn Smith
4. “Camels in the Clouds” by Gina Steeves
5. “A Shot Fired” by Becky Franklyn
6. “Under the Covers” by Shae Harper
7. “Santa’s Crazy Year” by Thomas Donahue
8. “Grandma’s House” by Thomas Donahue
9. “Ari’s Bathroom Map” by Rebecca Thapa
10. “Death and Theft” by Aspen Hite

Honorable Mentions

• “Higher Ground” by AB Cromer
• “Just Another Ordinary Day” by Jolea Broome
• “The Magic In Ming’s Hands” by Maureen Tai
• “Putting Toys To Bed” by Alan Elliott
• “Good Whine Gone Bad” by Jay Lehmann
• “Stuff As Dreams Are Made On” by Heidi M. Rogers
• “Lizzie’s Napa” by Lori Pelliccia
• “Talk To The Trees” by Angela De Groot
• “Things We’ll Ask God” by Rachel Wierick
• “Mom’s Superhero Story” by Jiwon Yoon
• “Blood Raven” by Becky Franklyn
• “A Zip Code from the Heart” by Sandy Cameli
• “The Last Gate” by Anna Alsup
• “Gotta Fly!” by Debbie Austin
• “The Night of the Magic Light” by Doug Geyer
• “Mia’s Puppet Party” by Megan Erin Hamilton
• “A Bellyful of Fireflies” by Marcus McGee
• “Dockson Billie” by Sherri Ashburner
• “The Arrowhead Game” by L.S. Scott
• “The Book Boat” by Jenny Nelson
• “Afraid of Rain No More” by Michael Harley
• “Simply Extraordinary” by Emma Bowen
• “Sequin the Snake—Explains World Peace to Children” by Carol Ikard
• “A Life Unfinished” by Brynda Wolf
• “Here, There, Everywhere” by Sabrina Powers
• “Baking a Cake” by Jobie Scarborough
• “What Will You Call Me?” by Shannon Mae
• “Ace Ferreira, Multiverse Mechanic” by Ridley Adams
• “Turning Back Time” by DM Reynolds
• “Just Tyler” by Tom Olds
• “Garage Sale Religion” by Susan Jensen
• “The Last Acolyte” by David Weinkauff
• “The Synonym Family” by Thomas Donahue
• “Streetlight Halo” by Kyrie Jade
• “Kyler and the Garbage Men” by Megan Churchman

Genre Short Story

1. “Poison Pills” by GK Daffu
2. “The Kimchi Contest I Never Signed Up For” by Rachel Desiree Felix
3. “Laney’s Rescue” by Deborah Boucher Stetson
4. “Bite Like Chocolate” by Bruna M. Barbosa
5. “A Spare Moment” by Emee Camp
6. “Morty’s Farewell” by Carrie Hachadurian
7. “Realm of the Grotesque” by Clarence J. Croxford
8. “Rwanda 2265” by Sig Watkins
9. “Lilacs” by Mark Mrozinski
10. “The Light Collector” by Christina Trujillo

Honorable Mentions

• “Cotillion” by Kejana Ayala
• “Our Lady of Life Support” by Amber Fenik
• “At the garden of the gods” by Frank Biro
• “Twice” by Penne Hawkins
• “A Complication” by Jennifer Slee
• “The Beast at the Door” by Eric Reitan
• “Thirteen Coins” by Teresa Michael
• “The Keeper” by Lucas Tremper
• “The Legend of the Red-Haired One” by Raw
• “Twice Pierced” by Joseph Tappero
• “The Clichéd Crime” by Bill Glose
• “Unknowing” by Andrew Hoffmeister
• “The Cycle” by Robin Nixon
• “A Morning at Diedre’s Cafe” by Richard Sutter
• “Treading Water” by Alison Wright
• “The Zenith of Her Powers” by Leslie Wibberley
• “The Voice That Lies” by J. P. Bellipanni
• “Nisha’s Revolution” by Judith Pratt
• “After” by Joslyn Lois Bartholomew
• “Hotel Room” by Andrew Kass
• “Willow” by Holland Poole
• “Tempest” by Kyla Paterno
• “A Reckoning at Trail’s End” by Albert Morrow
• “An Extra Scoop of Revenge” by Rachel Cyr
• “Without a Chaperone” by Susan Matley
• “Ring of Deception” by Michelle Hess
• “Everything Burns” by Jennifer Slee
• “The Currawong” by J.A. Clarke
• “More Than a Second-Hand Find” by Mary Jo Wyse
• “Dash Into Love” by Dorothy Wills-Raftery
• “The Last Mural Frances” by Aurelia Gold
• “Grains of Sand” by Peter Ball
• “Habits Don’t Lie” by Amy Collins
• “Beginnings and Endings” by Kelly Thomas
• “White Tooth” by Cody Pearce
• “Today I Shot Desmond” by Louise Bailey
• “The Porcelain Garden” by Cara Boynton
• “The Departed Dancer—A Las Vegas Mystery” by A.L.Padden
• “At Birth” by Kate Fitzgerald
• “A Castle in the Ocean” by J.H. Schiller
• “A Realm Of Smoke And Sins” by Alison Arico
• “Then I Became Us” by Victoria Lalayan
• “War” by Useless Assistant
• “The Big Smoke” by Jennifer Frost
• “The Hunger Pattern” by Jason Bellipanni

Humor

1. “Burnt Toast” by Don Michalowski
2. “A Vulgarity Smithsonian” by Greg Bauch
3. “A Textually Transmitted Disease” by Monda Kelley
4. “Nuts! A Regrettable but True Tale” by Michele Miles Gardiner
5. “I Will Come In Last With Grace and Good Eyeliner” by Mia Lazarewicz
6. “How to Write a Novel in 10 Years” by K. Ashby
7. “The Shade of the Bodhi Tree in a Basket of Waffle Fries” by John Garvey
8. “Revealed: The Hidden Secrets of Male Bonding!” by Gary Alexander
9. “Fore!” by A.J. Schmitz
10. “Faux pas” by Mary Finnen

Honorable Mentions

• “My Broken Zipper” by Geoffrey K. Graves
• “Finding Mr. Right” by Mary Ellen Humphrey
• “G-Man: And other humorous anecdotes taken from the teaching profession” by Dr. Donald Robertson
• “An ‘Intercoursal’” by Stroke Mary Finnen
• “HUH? The Story of My Broken Ears” by MerriLee Anderson
• “Newly Unwed” by Jamie Lockwood
• “Controversial Sermon Sparks Brouhaha Over Biscuits” by Lori Drake
• “Astronauts And Panty Hose” by Nanny Treadwell
• “Is Breaking Bad? Celebrating My Birthday in a Rage Room” by Karen Scholl
• “Dear Merriam-Webster” by Christine Petzar
• “Fishing for Seniors” by Steve Holland
• “Yakov the Supplanter” by Laurie Rosenwald
• “The Fainthearted” by Lisa Chow
• “I Swear I Skipped the Poison Apple” by Evelyn Aucoin
• “The Easter Dress Karen O Conway” by Kay McKay
• “Hello, this is Your Overly Talkative Captain” by Deanna Hahn
• “What’s for Dinner?” by Allia Zobel Nolan
• “Cupid: Chubby. Ornery. Mischievous!” Tammy Lough
• “The Great Holiday Light Display Race of Appleton Ave.” by J.C. McKenna
• “Breakfast with a Ghost” by Bison Scribe
• “Violets” by Jessalyn Haefele
• “Friends of the Earth Urgent Appeal” by Tom Gable
• “Why I Exercise, and Why I Don’t Care to Get Any Better” by Jacob Summerville
• “The Third Grader’s Manifestation of Queerness” by Risa Hasebe
• “The Sabbath” by Christopher D. Pence
• “Fifty Shades of Gruyère” by Jennifer Becker
• “Final Cut” by Don Michalowski
• “Ten Pounds in Three Days” by Joy Alicia
• “Easy Riders” by Joe Haines
• “A Half-Carton of Eggs and Getting Published” by Lori Drake

Inspirational/Spiritual

1. “All the Way to Mystery” by Stacy Clark
2. “Where the River Narrows” by David Paul Goins
3. “No Ordinary Love: Agnes and Leonard’s Visit” by Leonard Scovens
4. “One Samhain Night” by SamiJo McQuiston
5. “The Miracle of Ordinary Gifts” by Tracy Cranford
6. “The Boy From Somewhere Better” by Robin Farnsworth
7. “Grandma’s Garden” by Celeste Handfield
8. “Fireflies” by Heidi Botkin
9. “The Dakini’s Ants” by Robin Nixon
10. “The Initiation” by Holly Ma

Honorable Mentions

• “At the Feet of Sleeping Giants” by Kelli Sullivan
• “The Great Exchange” by Maureen Miller
• “The Pew by the Window” by EW Bradfute
• “30 Pieces of Silver” by John Tucker
• “Hummingbird” by Linda Peterson
• “Hope Came in the Mail” by Colleen Black
• “The Inevitable Sameena Topan” by sam riot
• “Spiritual Resilience in Opioid Withdrawal” by Donna Fado Ivery
• “Walking on Water” by Kristy Mabe
• “Rock of Ages” by Thorne Everet
• “Sustaining Hope in Uncertain Times: Jewish Strategies for Faith” by Carly Levy
• “The Garage” by Natasha Jo Benevides
• “Volleyball and the Virgin Mary” by Mary Ellen Collins
• “Fragmented Stones” by Rhonda Larson
• “Enmity” by Andrea Hayes
• “Her Birthday Is The Least of Her Concerns” by J B Nicholson Hunt
• “Mary Did You Know Controversy” by Kathy Ferrell Powell
• “Into the Light” by Kay Lesley Reeves
• “In The Forest & Field” by Katherine Tyler
• “The Valley” by Antionette Duck
• “A Gnome Knows” by Michael Gregory Whitfield
• “Radiance” by Jewel Garcia
• “Searching for Silence in India and Nepal” by Blake Plante
• “You’ve Got to Believe; It’s Not Magic” by James Meyer
• “Hortus Creatoris” by Aria Stewart
• “Water in Motion” by Ashley C. Shannon
• “Crazy, Mismatched Socks” by Holly Karpovich
• “The Traveler” by Lori Griffin
• “A Midwife’s Hands” by Bruce Graham
• “Bleak Midwinter” by Eric Beversluis
• “Breath as a Blessing: The Transformative Power of Breath” by Angela Waldron
• “Pilgrim” by Ashlen Renner
• “Learning To Swim” by Katie McGuire
• “The Paradoxes of Prayer” by Robert Pechman
• “What You Don’t See” by Sarah Boury

Mainstream/Literary Short Story

1. “The Memory Eater” by Eric Reitan
2. “Dugga Boys” by Greg Jones
3. “The Absence of Cut Grass” by G. Thomas Fin
4. “The Gas Line” by Colin Kostelecky
5. “J.C., Little Susie and the Music Seen” by Pat Rooney
6. “Cave Art” by Nathan Tobler
7. “Thankless” by Cynthia Liu
8. “Rise, River, Rise” by Taylor Brown
9. “Variation with Fan” by Karen Novak
10. “The Hugging Machine” by Nancy Lederman

Honorable Mentions

• “Terms of Haunting” by Caroline Hall
• “Tapestry” by John Garvey
• “Short Story/Fiction” by Susan Eastham
• “Olive Theory” by Serrina Zou
• “My Family Tree” by Mary Upton
• “The Raccoons” by Kyle Wong
• “Mama’s Baby” by Haley Bebout
• “His Forest” by Meredith Gebhardt
• “Rejection Letter” by Ty Green
• “Gold and Bones” by L.J. Longo
• “Dream Journal” by Sunthorn Capellini
• “An Ordinary Guest” by Tamar Mezvrishvili
• “The Bad Luck House” by Cath Bibeau
• “Bloom” by Gwendolyn Bellinger
• “Boys Like Us” by Siavash Saadlou
• “Downed” by Gabrielle Glaslyn
• “Mourning Dove” by Christine Roy
• “Smile for the Camera” by Jessica Junqua
• “The Quiet Howl” by Garin Demirjian
• “My First Body” by Baird Harper
• “The Divide” by Ferrell Jennings
• “Time and Time Again” by Ryne
• “Johnny Appleseed” by Katie Harms
• “The Blue Road” by Robert Ziegler
• “Reaching For The Sun” by Elizabeth Conte
• “The Good Mother” by Dana Rodney
• “Aliens Are Us Shelley” by Jones Clark
• “So Long as the Earth is Spinning” by Sharan Yaso
• “Liberty” by L. M. Filarsky
• “The Gingerbread Boy” by Lide Dawson
• “Lost and Found” by Bruce Jay Baker
• “Lifeline” by Natalie Moore
• “Rooted Jane Hershberger” by Jane Hershberger
• “Little Angels Of God” by Mark Lyn Campbell
• “Where the Walls Remember: Grete Samsa’s Unraveling—A Metamorphosis Adaptation” by Meghan Hanily
• “December First” by Katie McGuire
• “R&R” by Owen Goodwyne
• “The Neighborhood Marketplace” by Rose Sampley
• “Prairie Grass” by John Cheesebrow
• “Don’t Tell the Boys” by Jacob Mayer
• “Sapling” by Helen Vidrine
• “Wild Hymn” by Ashley Berry
• “Animal Husbandry” by Aili Whalen
• “Dirge for the Divine and Departed” by Irene Hwang
• “A Nice Girl” by Jane Corey
• “Nighthawks” by Jeremy Stelzner
• “The Conversationalist” by Rosanna Watts
• “Undertone” by M.C. Blandford
• “Who We Were Yesterday” by Josh Rosen
• “Nightlight Marianne” by Malloy Kirby

Memoir/Personal Essay

1. “The Dead Whale” by Carol Keeley
2. “Salvage Rights” by Cheryl A. Kelley
3. “Turning Pages” by Landon Porter
4. “Bleed” by Catherine Dorian
5. “The VA Destroyed My Body — and No One Will Help Me” by David Lee Condrey
6. “Friendly Fire” by Lide Dawson
7. “Crushed” by Carrie Osborne
8. “Ask Me How My Mother Died” by Liam Carnahan
9. “Center of Gravity” by Kristina Kasparian
10. “In Pieces” by Jen Shepherd

Honorable Mentions

• “First Job” by Geoffrey K. Graves
• “The Human Touch” by Sukhwinder Sukh
• “By Chance” by Darlene Junker
• “Wire Mesh and Memory: A Craniotomy Forgotten” by Krystal Renee
• “Giving Up My Ghost” by Esther Raday
• “Resting Places” by Beth Christiano
• “Couch Mom” by Stacy Johnson
• “All He Needs” by Quincy Trochue
• “Memoir Essay: Still Small Things” by Erin Schalk
• “We Were Here” by Colleen Black
• “Jew” by Jane K Stern
• “Raising Lambs” by Michelle Nicolaysen
• “Behind the Red Door” by Renee Roberson
• “Intervention: Fully Loaded” by Maddy Nye
• “Let Him Go” by Mari Harrison
• “No Questions Asked” by Lorraine Lai
• “I’m Not Normal” by Amy Jean Hetland
• “Dear Lorraine” by Michael Creger
• “Medical Jenga” by Janet Yeager
• “Puppy Love” by Kristen Wilson
• “Hungry Animals” by Ashley Berry
• “The flags we didn’t earn” by Faye Zasada
• “Turning Point” by Mary Mortensen
• “When the City Began Again” by M. Lea Gray
• “Hey Dad, It’s Me” by Don Michalowski
• “The Folder Called Not Ready” by Kathryn Johnson
• “The Subtle Art of Falling From a High Place” by Alex Tricarico
• “The Art of Falling Apart While Smiling” by Nicole Duff
• “Child’s Play” by Jerome Goettsch
• “Disassembled” by Alyssa Holly
• “Unsprouted” by Haley Russo
• “Muses Work Best When They’re Far Away” by Francesca Willow
• “Trickles” by Tracy Cranford
• “Little Owl” by Tracy Cranford
• “Shaved Heads” by Heide Brandes
• “Was His Love Worth My Life?” by Phiiip Alexander
• “Where the Hell is Ordway, Anyway?” by Philip Alexander
• “A Thing With Fangs” by Cynthia Singerman
• “Lone Staircase” by Christen Makhoul
• “Burning for Sully” by Jen Shepherd
• “Steak Tartare” by Alison Foster
• “Bad Fortune” by Janet Guthrie
• “Sweet Lemon Grass” by Jen Shepherd
• “Running With Eunice” by Carol Marks Stopforth
• “Eight Shots” by Owen Ryan
• “My Grandfather’s Fathers” by Karen Gravelle
• “How to Play Kings Corner” by Fay Falcone
• “Process: An Excerpt” by Steven R. Perez
• “Rotten Sunflowers on Grandpa’s Grave” by Chia Lam
• “The American Goldfinch” by Aimee Seiff Christian

Nonfiction Essay or Article

1. “Little Black Book” by Rebecca Victoria Blanchard
2. “A Witness to History” by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds
3. “Analyzing the Role of Photography in the Depiction of Native Americans in the 19^th Century” by Tsi’Ani Washington
4. “With Kristi in the Garden” by Ramona Scarborough
5. “Out of Many, One People: The Origins of Jamaican Ancestry” by Vilma Ruddock
6. “A Dog Leads the Way” by Margie Gray
7. “The Tangled Web We Weave” by Dana Zartner
8. “Meaningful Metamorphosis” by Julie Jacobs                
9. “The Bare Truth” by Leslie Wibberley
10. “The Holy Righteous Queen Tamar” by Angela Waldron

Honorable Mentions

• “The unsettling chic is our modern aesthetic of ugliness” by Denis Bozic
• “Would You Be My Pen Pal if I Paid You?” by Naomi Horne
• “Of Snails and The Hundred Yard Dash” by Larry Menlove
• “Time Traveler” by Jill Sisson
• “Beethoven and Napoleon: Decomposing Symphony Number 3 ‘Eroica'” by Mark A. Fulco
• “Four Times I Fled the Flames” by Tamara Nowlin
• “Dance Movement Meets Psychotherapy” by Ember Reichgott Junge
• “The Language Of Love” by Pat Matthews
• “Holbein’s Ambassadors” by Patrick Tyman
• “Black Lives on the Titanic” by Douglas Walters
• “Underground Anthologies: Public Transportation Meets Poetry” by Emma Arden
• “Writing Like Hemingway” by Azalea Lucile
• “Gender Bias in the Polls: How Sexism can Prevent Female Leaders” by Leslie Rutledge
• “For Gentlemen Only” by Cheryl Bailey
• “The High Life: For circus artists and aerialists, something’s always up” by Kathy Bradshaw
• “Close Encounters of the Animal Kingdom Kind” by Krishna “Krash” Jackson
• “Swimming Beyond Fear” by Elaine Howley
• “Triathlon’s Spiritual Side” by Elaine Howley
• “‘Heart of the Eternal’ Opens the Second Chapter for A.J. Croce” by Sheryl Aronson
• “Showcasing Female Power in Ballroom Dance” by Ember Reichgott Junge
• “Call to Action for Social Prescribing” by Ember Reichgott Junge
• “I’m Not Going to Live in God’s Waiting Room” by Ember Reichgott Junge
• “A Powerful Presence in the Ballroom World” by Ember Reichgott Junge
• “Oui the People” by Kathy Bradshaw
• “Take a Walk on the Tiled Side: It seems that everyone is playing mahjong these days” by Kathy Bradshaw
• “Oh Generous One, Oh Noble One, Oh Hero: The Path of the Akhi in Anatolia” by Angela Waldron
• “Anatolian Sikke” by Angela Waldron
• “The Evil Eye” by Angela Waldron
• “English as both Gateway and Barrier to Legitimacy and Success in Post-colonial African Literature” by Douglas Walters
• “A Pilgrimage to the Holy City of Lhasa” by Angela Waldron

Non-Rhyming Poetry

1. “Wiffle Ball” by Gary V. Powell
2. “留下街道 [Liuxia Street]” by Yan Zhang
3. “Another Supermarket in California” by Judith Chibante
4. “What Kind of Fool” by Alison Luterman
5. “Untitled” by Michael Olson
6. “16^th Street Flight” by Kent Neal
7. “Day Trip” by Paul Tifford Jr.
8. “Horsie—A Sestina for Mommy” by Kendra Aya
9. “Human Binoculars” by Todd Friedman
10. “Where Water Meets the Sky” by M. G. Field

Honorable Mentions

• “The New England Aspect” by Jeffery Allen Tobin
• “Snow on the Brain” by Paul Tifford Jr.
• “Ordinary Birds” Erin Murphy
• “I Need To Be Something Worth Losing” by Jacob Reisinger
• “A Garden of Penitents” by Redd Ryder
• “A Used Up Year” by D.T. Christensen
• “Passages” by Paula J. Lambert
• “Spring Light” by Stephen Burns
• “We Discover Fire: Elkhart Indiana, 1962” by Julie Novak-McSweeney
• “A História da Criação” by Lauren Michelle Finkle
• “Nice Clothes” by Brian Evans
• “A Class for Almost-Mothers” by Adele Evershed
• “Bluebeard: A Sestina” by Serrina Zou
• “A Night at Fort Stevens” by Brian Evans
• “ippississiM Backwards” by Michelle Alexander
• “Riding from Synesthesia to Metaphor on a Bicycle Built for Two” by Stephanie Saywell
• “Deadweight” by Rebecca Buller
• “Sophomore Year” by Rebecca Buller
• “The Post Office” by Rebecca Buller
• “what to do when your ex-husband stops by for your last signature on legal forms” by Kathy Lenney
• “The Bird of Your Life” by Alison Luterman
• “Grief Potatoes” by Alison Luterman
• “El Tapatio” by Paula Wagner
• “The Pepsi Guy” by Kimberly Shaw
• “The Sun Does Shine in the Ghetto” by Elizabeth Smith
• “We Love Uncle Mengele” by C. Lynn Shaffer
• “The Tip of the Wip” by Ockert Greeff
• “Into the Last Nights” by Ockert Greeff
• “All the Way to This Heavy Tree” by Ockert Greeff
• “Dance Studio on the Assabet” by D.T. Christensen
• “Toward an Understanding of Summer” by D.T. Christensen
• “Yellow Grass” by Ayla Walter
• “The Tyranny of Maps” by Dennis Todd
• “R2-D2” by Kay King
• “Green” by Suellen Wedmore
• “Mastered the Art” by Jane R. Snyder
• “Two Doors” by John Gibson
• “on anxious attachment” by Leta Rebecca Cunningham
• “I Speak” by Mel Diyarza
• “i stood on america’s shoulders and looked up at you” by Dean Gessie
• “A Reading from the Book of Sidewalk” by Jill A. Melchoir
• “Jumping From a Cedar Lake Pier, circa 1970’s” by Rebecca Evans
• “What She Does with Fire” by Meg Taylor
• “Witness to a Murder” by Michael Shoemaker
• “The Net” by Emily Portillo
• “a force of nature” by Dean Gessie
• “It Is Still Good” by Anissa Lynne Johnson
• “13^th Street” by Lyn Caldwell
• “Oh, How He Washed, and How She Pitied” by Magiel Ockert Greeff

Rhyming Poetry

1. “Plaints of the Old Git” by Peter Hankins
2. “Servant by the Sea” by P.D. McMilian
3. “Barn Cats” by Linda Lee Bowen
4. “The Black Mare” by Jorge Rojas, MD
5. “Third Grade Redemption” by Victoria Mary Fach
6. “If You Come to a Gathering of Trees” by Judith Chibante
7. “Where Lost Cats Dance” by J.R. Roland
8. “A Looking Glass Tribute” by Janet S. Qually
9. “The Time of Mud” by Kurt Luchs
10. “Heavenly Ocean Views” by Leslie Charles Stanford

Honorable Mentions

• “On Visiting Berlin’s Empty Library Memorial” by Laurie Clark
• “A Sonnet for All Our Broken Angels” by Adele Evershed
• “Aelios” by Jafar Cain
• “Nana’s Lament” by Anne Madigan Murphy
• “The Future Bird Scientist” by Shannon Miller
• “Rhyming Poem” by Falsetto Prophet
• “The Cardboard Underneath” by Christopher Williams
• “Olathe” by Amber Wommack Fox
• “Lovers of Chaos” by Elena Tolstova
• “The Latch Lifter” by Barry Childs
• “As One” by Fig Aster
• “Darkest Before Dawn” by Stephen Torrens
• “Buried” by asha anand
• “Sturdy Joe Sonnet” Paul Tifford Jr.
• “Father’s Lullaby” by Grant Moore
• “The Moon is Always Round” by Landon Porter
• “The piano in the alley” by Hagai Perets
• “Hair Like That” by Rocky Lepliin
• “Our Stain to Lament” by Jennifer Roberts
• “The Tale of Fanny McGree, No One as Famous as She” by Briana Melton
• “Daddy’s Smile” by Tamiko Nesbitt
• “The Longest Goodbye” by Holly Emery
• “The Porch Lady and Her Feral Friend” by Katrina Soto
• “The Ship” by Labertha McCormick
• “Seed Corn Should Not Be Ground” by J.W. Rose
• “Resolution” by R. Spencer Dooley
• “The Box” by Aimée Doyle
• “On The Night You Were Born” by Terri Michels
• “All that Glitters” by P.D. McMilian
• “Inside” by Freeman Ng
• “Parody of Hush Little Baby” by SunYeong Still
• “Reign of a Cloud” by Matthew Wenzel
• “Bells On The Wind” by Kimberly Shaw
• “The Chair Beside the Window” by Rhys Evans
• “The Chicken’s Wedding” by Julia Griffin
• “A Necklace of Words” by John Wagner
• “Disappearing” by Villanelle Kurt Luchs
• “myths” by Michael Miller
• “The Dream of Crossing the Water” by Mary Brennan
• “Did You Call Me?” by Mary Brennan

The post Announcing the Winners of the 94th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

See the full list of winners here!

When did you start writing?

Pretty much from the moment I had the fine motor skills to grip a pencil and form letters. I started off in first grade writing elaborate fantasies in my journal about what my dog did when we left the house. As a kid, I’d write books to give as gifts to my cousins when we went to visit them over the summer. I wrote short stories and humor pieces for fun in high school, majored in English and Creative Writing in college, and got to work writing a collection of short stories after graduation. Basically, I never had a shot at doing anything else.

What do you like most about writing in the short short form?

Half of good writing is editing. How can you say what you mean—no more, no less? The constraints of the short short form force you to get to the point and sharpen your prose until it’s precise and deadly. Plus: everyone’s attention spans are so dilapidated these days, you’ve got a much better shot of a reader actually making it to the end of your story if it’s bite-sized.

Where did the inspiration for “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure” come from?

I was reflecting on a trip I’d taken to Vegas and just how surreal a place it is: the giddiness, the headiness, the buoyant feeling that something wonderful is about to happen at any moment—and also the griminess, the hollowness, the endless tease that never seems to come to fruition. I ended up exploring that double-edged feeling through the lens of a relationship between two people stuck in a toxic cyclical pattern with one another, a dynamic that keeps approaching what feels like love or connection or pleasure but never quite reaches it.

What did your drafting and revision processes look like for “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure?”

I got pretty much the entirety of the story down in one sitting during a writing session at a local cafe. (That’s another joy of the short short format: being able to hack up a full story in a moment of inspiration and then get straight to polishing it.) The version that won the award actually changed very little from that first draft—I made a few tweaks to tighten and clarify things after running it by my workshop group, but this one came out “fully formed, ready to run,” as Ada Limón put it. 

Do you have a history of entering writing competitions?

Absolutely—like any self-respecting writer, I’ve got an Excel sheet that’s a tribute to the dozens of “no’s,” “nice no’s,” and “shortlists” I’ve received over the years. This was my first real win!

What interested you in entering WD’s Short Short Competition?

I was flipping through the back of Poets and Writers Magazine looking for contests and submission calls that aligned with what I was working on (I’m currently revising a linked short story collection about a bunch of college misfits—think Overcompensating meets A Visit From the Goon Squad by way of Mary Gaitskill). I saw just how many outlets were looking for stories with low word counts (3,000 or less), whereas most of the stories in my collection are over 3K. So I set myself a challenge to write something shorter than my usual work so I could try submitting to some new places, and this story popped out at exactly 1,000 words—the word limit for WD’s Short Short Competition. It felt like fate so I submitted it, promptly forgot I’d done so, and was so incredibly shocked when I received the acceptance email, I was convinced it was a very elaborate phishing scam. 

What advice do you have for other writers out there?

Keep writing, even if it’s just scenes and fragments, because the more you do, the more random pages you’ll have to stumble back on weeks or months or years later and say, “Wait, I wrote that? That could be something…” Keep a journal; use it to keep track of interesting things you notice so you stay attuned to the world. (You will want to remember the jacaranda tree that exploded all over your car, the smell inside that dive bar you stumbled into, the precise color of the sky the day after it rained.) Form or join a workshop with other writers—share your writing with them even and especially when it’s scary; learn how to give good feedback in a way that’s honest, helpful, and kind; and learn how to receive feedback without spiraling, getting defensive, or losing touch with your own instincts. Also, remember that a creative process is as powerful, finicky, and irrepressible as an ocean wave; even if you’re in a creative “low tide,” trust the process and remember that high tide is always coming back around.

A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure

by Hanna Bahedry

Any minute now, the pleasure is coming. Any minute now, around the corner, the pleasure is coming. Any minute now, you’ll be turning the corner and the pleasure will bump right into you or the pleasure will be turning the corner and you’ll bump right into it; any minute now, you and the pleasure will collide and send a tray of fluted champagne glasses flying; any minute now, you and the pleasure will collide and send one or both of you into the hotel pool and you’ll both be sopping wet and everyone in their deck chairs will cheer; any minute now, you and the pleasure will collide.

It’s Las Vegas, because of course it is. This is where the pleasure lives, but just around the corner always. Here is where the pleasure is circulating, but always away from you like a waiter on the casino floor. Here is where the hope lives, not just the hope but the absolute certainty that something magnificent is bound to happen, is right on the verge of happening, that all you need to do is close your eyes and stumble faithfully around the next blind corner to find it. The less you do, the better, actually. The magnificent thing is fated, it is on a course set straight for you, you are the Google Maps destination that the magnificent thing has plugged into the phone on its dashboard, and all you need to do is be here and wait for it to find you.

 Outside, it’s airless like a breath stolen straight from your chest. The heat and the diesel fumes combine in the city’s cocktail shaker like a drink no one wants, a drink left in a plastic-handled neon travel mug on the corner of an intersection wider than a pilgrimage. Under the sun, the asphalt cracks and the linoleum splinters and the paint peels like skin in long strips.

If outside is airless, then inside is all air, airheaded and heady, a balloon cresting a high ceiling like a tongue against a mouth’s roof, everything high high high, too high for gravity, too high for the earth to turn, too high for the clock to strike. Every watch stopped at 00:00, every pair of hands sky high and stuck there forever.

You don’t wear a watch. You wear black and not that much of it. You circle the casino floor like you are inevitable, and every flashing light, every winning shout, every tuneless slot machine jingle is for you. You wait at the bar. You are always waiting here, but that’s OK. Here you know that the pleasure is coming, that the magnificent thing is always already on its way to you. The bartender is making your drink, and then she is handing it to you.

When he arrives, he’s wearing black too: shoes, pants, shirt, jacket. No tie. He kisses you. He smells like the diesel cocktail from the streets outside. He has been working all day while you sat by the pool in the saline heat with a bright blue cocktail longer than your forearm. He takes a sip from your drink, takes your hand and presses it to his lips, to his heart, which you cannot see but which you assume is somewhere just under the black shirt, the chest hair, the silver chain.

He does not ask you how your day was, and you do not ask him how his day was. He asks you what you want to drink, and he orders two, and he looks into your eyes as if he loves you. It is the way he always looks at you, and it has always scared you because you do not know if what you are and what he is seeing are the same thing. When he looks at you like this, his eyes become bottomless, and you cannot tell where they lead.

He is smooth, so smooth, but underneath the smoothness, there is something spikey and ragged, something that sizzles like a live wire. When the smoothness wears away (which it always does), you know you will get burned. You are covered in these burns already, burns he kisses better once he’s done making them, covered enough to wonder if love is meant to require so much Neosporin. But for now, he is smooth, so smooth. His thumb is at home on your knee, and he is laughing when you laugh. You both have a second round and a third round, and when you get up, the room tilts on its axis like the whizzing eyes of a slot machine. His hand is at your elbow, your back, your waist, and the carpet is red and gold and everywhere.

He waits outside while you hack in the lobby bathroom, champagne and spit on the ends of your hair, which you wet clean in the sink. The mirror is huge, and you are inside of it, and you are gorgeous, even with your champagne and spit-wet ends, even and maybe especially with the hollow look in your eyes. When you are alone with yourself, the hollow thing inside your eyes you do not want to acknowledge gets louder and louder, and so you push back through the swinging door into the casino, which is always louder than your thoughts, the casino which always wins.

He is waiting there, and his eyes are sparkling with the bottomless thing that scares you. His arm is around your shoulder, guiding you through the lobby and into the elevator, where you watch both of your faces in the mirror on the ceiling. Sometimes you think you are always watching because you are waiting for what you are seeing to change into something that does not scare you. You watch for as long as you think it should take to change, and then you keep watching.

The hallway is long with many corners. An empty room service tray, there. You could order room service. You could do anything you want. That’s the whole point, that’s the whole point of coming here, all the infinite options for pleasure, all the infinite options. The door beeps red, then green.

You kiss standing up inside the room, near the door, away from the beds. He kisses your neck. You’re dizzy. You’re crying and you’re not sure why. He is kind, he is always kind when it happens, like a part in a script he knows how to play. Sometimes you wonder if you cry so you can get to the part where he is always kind. He’s running a bath, sitting on the white edge of the tub with one black sleeve rolled up, cuff wet like the ends of your hair. You know in the morning, he will be angry, that the bottomless tunnels in his eyes will close, and when you go to touch him, he will push you away like a punishment, but tonight he is kind. He undresses you and puts you in the tub and undresses himself and sits at the other end. You tell him you are sorry (which is true), and he tells you it’s OK (which isn’t). But he is tender with you now, and it is so easy to believe him.

When the water gets cold, he wraps you in a towel you wish was softer. You hold each other in the bathroom until your skin is sticky with dried soap. You always wish this part could last longer, but already his eyes are beginning to close in that way they do. In the morning, they will be all the way closed, and you will reach for him, and he will turn you away, so tonight you get under the covers and back your body up against his so you don’t have to watch it happen. Maybe it will be different this time when you wake. Maybe his eyes will be open, and when you look into them, you’ll see all the way down to the bottom, and what you see there will not scare you, and he will see you, and it will really be you. You think it should be possible. You think about it so often, sometimes you trick yourself into thinking it has already happened.

Any minute now, the pleasure is coming. Any minute now, you and the pleasure will bump shoulders at the bar, will reach for the same gilded button at the elevator bay, will beeline for the same blackjack table, and put your hands on the same empty chair. Any minute now pleasure’s car will pull up alongside yours on the highway with the windows down, any minute there’ll be a knock on the hotel room door and pleasure will be on the other side of the peephole, any minute now the lever will pull and the lights will flash and pleasure will come pouring out like dirty change right into your ready open palms, any minute now you and the pleasure will collide.

The post Hanna Bahedry: 25th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Awards Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Out of many great entries, WD editors selected the following 25 winners:

1. “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure” by Hanna Bahedry

2. “Scratch” by Gordon B. McFarland

3. “Toward the Thermosphere” by JL Perling

4. “The Piano” by Jenna-Marie Warnecke

5. “The Creation of Art” by Jenna-Marie Warnecke

6. “Initiate” by Coby Kellogg

7. “The Way Back” by Eric Jacobs

8. “At the Lochshore” by Sarah Dollacker

9. “Revival Reatha” by Thomas Oakley

10. “The Western Reaches” by Caitlin A. Quinn

11. “Vivid Warm” by Richard Jespers

12. “Red Bird (or, Eleanor at the End)” by Juliana Delany

13. “Witness Marks” by J.M. Lake

14. “My Father the Telepath” by Sophia Hyland-Wolzak

15. “The Bobby Pin Box” by Carol Elizabeth Larson

16. “Nature’s Decision” by John Arthur Lee

17. “What Wasn’t There” by C. Piper

18. “Something for the Children” by Katie Wills Evans

19. “Side-Step” by Laura Guilbault

20. “Echoes of Silence” by Nicole Disney

21. “An Infinite Capacity” by Mark D. Mrozinski

22. “An Odd Number” by Coby Kellogg

23. “Open Secrets” by Tim Lynch

24. “Dinner Date” by Jenna  Merritt 

25. “Choices” by Minh-Tam Le

The post Announcing the Winners of the 25th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

See the full list of winners here!

I’ve said it before, but choosing the winner of the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards is one of my favorite things to do each year. In 2024, there were more than 700 entries covering a range of forms, subjects, issues, and themes. In the end, I selected Judith Chibante’s “Naïve Beauty” for the First Place Prize of $1,000, publication in Writer’s Digest, and a 20–minute consultation with yours truly.

Chibante, who has been writing “since Mrs. Thompson’s English class in high school” before going on to teach for four decades herself, previously finished in the Top 10 for this competition multiple times, and her perseverance paid off this time around. For me, her poem “Naïve Beauty” was a sonic delight focused on natural beauty.

Here’s a quick Q&A:

What are you currently up to?

I have not yet published a full-length book, and would like to shape the current manuscript I’m working on in that direction. That, of course, means more prolific writing, which is a major focus right now. Why not write a poem a day? (WD features a path for this.) Or at least a week? I continue to need to challenge myself on this.

What inspired “Naïve Beauty”?

An in-depth study of Gerard Manley Hopkins gave impetus for the form, but the ideas are from my own discoveries about creating the new—what hadn’t been in the world until I brought it into Being. When I was a young girl, I made a pillow out of felt and yarn; even though I had used a pattern, I remember the euphoria to look at that pillow and realize it had never “been”
before—now it “was.” This poem expresses the power—and, I think—the magic of making a new entity: finishing the hat in Stephen Sondheim’s words.

And … that making saves us. Any one of us at any moment may need redeeming. From what? From the ordinary, from past slovenly or half-realized effort, from self-doubt. Perhaps these are the “sins” (if any) of the artist.

If you could pass on one piece of advice to other poets, what would it be?

You are as much an artist as Monet or Beethoven—their reputations were created by others embracing and lifting their art. Their own creative process is the same one you tussle with. You paint in the language of images and description and fresh observations. Put everything down on your “new canvas” (it’s only blank until you come to it)—that three-word refrain repeatedly playing in your head, the inspirational turn of phrase from Call the Midwife (e.g., “We are each other’s wealth and our greatest good fortune …”). Keep a running log on your tablet to catch yourself—and others—being brilliant; use it as a personal source to mine.

Also, seek out poems that speak to you to learn “by heart”—your heart. Mine is stirred by poems of poets as diverse as Charles Baudelaire (“Be Drunk”) and Jane Kenyon (“Happiness”). In this way, you build a body of high language that becomes a background to draw from for your own efforts. Once poems are living in your heart—those of others, as well as your own—you can access them at 3 a.m. or standing in the grocery check-out line or sitting in another waiting room. And they make for a deep and rich anteroom for meditation.

The post Judith Chibante: 19th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Want an opportunity to win a WD award? Keep checking our competitions page for upcoming competitions.

1. “Ground Zero” by F.A. Battle

2. “They Say if You Name the Thing, it Helps” by Allie Dixon

3. “A Stroke, a Recovery, and a Marriage Revised” by Charlotte Troyanowski

4. “How to (not) get into an Ivy League School” by jlee

5. “Letters from Far Away” by Jean Palmer Heck

6. “The Verizon Guy” by J. Shepherd

7. “A Baker’s Dozen: Thirteen Perspectives on Anorexia” by Deborah Svec-Carstens

8. “Ode to an Ugly Urn” by Katrina Gallegos

9. “Delivery Notes” by J. Mackenzie

10. “Didu” by M. Talu

11. “The Hunt” by Elinor Horner

12. “Cardinal Virtues” by Robin Clifford Wood

13. “Treasures from the Sea” by Renee Srch

14. “A Clash of Cultures Around the Dinner Table” by Genine Babakian

15. “AFTERTHOUGHT ON AN EPITAPH” by Melanie Verbout

16. “Because the Night belongs to Mothers” by Hope Loraine Cotter

17. “My Name Isn’t Michelle” by Nicholle Harrison 

18. “Historian of Silences” by Jonathan Odell

19. “In the End” by Mark V Sroufe

20. “Man Enough” by Christian Escalona

21. “Across the Gulf” by Annie Barker

22. “On Fathering (What You Didn’t Know)” by John Cheesebrow

23. “My Name is Not Sally” by Celia Ruiz

24. “An Abortion, a hysterectomy, and Black Sweatpants” by Lynne Schmidt

25. “Aging, Angst, & Anxiety” by Stephanie Baker

Check out the latest Writer’s Digest Competitions!

The post Announcing the 5th Annual Personal Essay Awards Winners appeared first on Writer's Digest.

As we met to discuss her winning novel, Claire Fraise said something that resonated with every part of her writing and publishing journey: “I just try to keep a curious mindset and to explore and to keep doing something to move myself in the direction where I want to be going. Even when it can feel challenging.”

After falling in love with dystopian YA fiction while reading series like The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, she asked herself, “Why can’t I try writing one of my own?” For two years, she did nothing but think about her characters and write. Then she self-published that novel, titled Imperfect.

She was only 16 years old.

“What really attracted me to self-publishing was that I would be able to hold on to all of the ownership of this work that I’d spent so much time creating and that I had the final say and control over all aspects of production in that book,” she says.

With this ownership came challenges of all kinds, but also the wisdom that comes with overcoming them. “I have so much experience now marketing and doing design and learning how to interact with readers and be on social media and run ads and do all of these different things that fit into publishing,” she says. “That has been amazing, and I’m so glad that I’ve been able to have that.”

While she wrote Imperfect as a young adult, she continues to write young adult fiction now that she’s in her 20s. Fraise explains that she loves it because the stories tend to be more hopeful than stories written for adults. She says, “Even though they go through stuff, they still have that optimism … If they go and do things like confide in others and lean on others and ask for help, their situations can get better, and they can improve them. … It’s really fun as an author because I can put them through a lot of really horrible stuff, and they’re still managing to keep their fighting spirit.” But readers can rest easy knowing that everything Fraise writes will end with some kind of hopeful note—something else that she equates with YA literature.

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Her next big project—what would become They Stay—would take a few more years to come to fruition. She wrote the early draft while in her freshman year of college, and candidly explains that it wasn’t a successful draft. “I knew after I wrote it that I was not going to do anything with this book,” she says with a laugh. “It was a mess.”

But instead of shutting that story in a proverbial drawer and forgetting about it, she continued to wonder about what it could be. “For the next year and a half, I couldn’t get those characters out of my head. Like, that girl who could see ghosts was really interesting to me. And I loved the friendship dynamic between that school bad boy and the nerdy kid. … So, I sat down one day, and I was like, How could I structure a book with these characters in a way that fixes all of the problems that I had before?”

That was the first question of many that drove her revisions. Rewriting can often be a frustrating and painful process, but Fraise focused on staying open and kept asking questions until a clear story outline presented itself. But then, another hurdle: “I had heard that if you publish a series, it’s a lot easier to gain traction when you’re just starting out in self-publishing … you can run ads [for] Book One, and your ads are more likely to be profitable … a certain percentage of [people] will go on to read Book Two and Three and Four, et cetera.

“I came up with a way to turn that book into a story with serious potential and to widen it … It was the product of me sitting down knowing that I wanted to write a series and making a bunch of tweaks and being really thoughtful about how I was going to construct it. Because I have a plotter’s brain, and I like tinkering with projects and moving things around and constructing them almost like I’m building a puzzle.”

Her love of puzzles makes sense; she’s a genre author, and solving puzzles is integral to the stories that she tells. “I don’t know how mystery and thriller writers can write mysteries without plotting them and figuring out how they go together because I used to get so overwhelmed trying to figure out what information was being revealed to the readers when,” she says with a laugh. “… a couple of years ago, I started outlining all my books using plot grids, which was super helpful because then I could see exactly what was happening in every single subplot over the course of the story, and then track what was happening in each chapter.”

All writers can learn from the way Fraise approaches these kinds of changes to her writing process. Even though she released the first four books in the They Stay series in three years, an incredible feat, she believes she still has a lot to learn and remains open to switching things up. “My goal is just to make every book that I publish a little bit better than the last one … If I tried to publish a book that was absolutely perfect, I would never publish anything!”

More recently, she began to consider entering competitions. She confessed that, from a business standpoint, having the social capital from a competition placement can be what tips the scales when a reader is considering whether they should purchase a self-published book. But beyond that, she says that what’s most important as a self-published author is that “you need to be curious and put yourself out there in a bunch of different little ways and experiment to try to see what works and what ends up sticking and what doesn’t end, because there are so many things that change all the time with self-publishing.” This willingness to put her work out there netted her grand prize in the 31^st Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards for They Stay, which includes a $10,000 cash prize and a paid trip to the 2024 Writer’s Digest Annual Conference.

When asked what advice she would give to other writers, her response is instantaneous: “Be persistent. Keep your eye on your goal, and don’t expect things to happen all at once. Keep moving in the direction that you want to go in, keep trying things, and stay curious; learn as much as you can. But don’t put all the pressure on yourself to be an expert in everything overnight. Just go into it with a mindset of learning, keep an open mind, and keep showing up for your book and for your dream. Because that’s the only way it’s going to come true.” 

The post Claire Fraise: 2023 Self-Published Book Awards Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Do you have a book in you? Enter the next Self-Published Book Awards.

Grand Prize

They Stay by Claire Fraise

Mainstream/Literary Fiction

Little Bird & The Tiger by Ellis Amdur

Honorable Mentions

• A Portion of Malice: Ages of Malice, Book I by Lloyd Jeffries 
• House on Fire by D. Liebhart 
• Mask of Dreams by Leigh Grant 
• The Hoffman Affairs by Beth Schorr Jaffe 
• Willow’s Run by Robert Bockstael

Genre Fiction

Home News: A Novel of 1928 by JD Solomon

Honorable Mentions

• Beneath the Maize by Stephen Goldhahn
• Coup de Grâce by Paul Centeno
• Crew of Exiles by Neal Holtschulte
• Dragon Seer: Deathborne by S. Kay Lanphear
• I Fail at the Afterlife by Anni Sezate
• In the Shadow of a Hoax by Maci Aurora
• Sins of the Lines by Sharhonda Exantus
• Swimming in the Rainbow by Rebecca Lochlann
• The Long Road Back to You by Buck Turner 

Nonfiction/Reference

The Sustainability Revolutionists: Heroes and Hope for Our Planet’s Future by Lucia Athens

Honorable Mentions

• Cannabis Lullaby by David Sharp
• Rehabit Your Life: A Doctor’s Notebook to Navigating Health & Wellbeing by PL Bandy
• The Borinqueneers: A Visual History of the 65^th Infantry Regiment by Noemi Figueroa Soulet

Inspirational/Self-Help

Small Talk Rules: 65 Lessons I Learned From the Greatest Communicators by Gregory Peart

Honorable Mentions

• Heavenly Headbutts: Reflections of Hope About Cats and Eternity by Allia Zobel Nolan
• Your Body Is Your Weapon: The Little Self-Defense Handbook by I. Buenaventura

Memoirs/Life Stories 

Travels With My Grief by Susan Bloch

Honorable Mentions

• Days of Wonder by Bill Vossler
• Down on Court Five: Lessons Late in Life by Vivian Witkind
• Melissa Come Back by Patrice Keet & Melissa LaHommedieu
• Mom’s Search for Meaning: Grief and Growth After Child Loss by Melissa M. Monroe
• Standing in the Wings: My Life on (and Mostly Just Off) Stage by Fred Krohn

Early Readers/Children’s Picture Books

Read Island by Nicole Magistro

Honorable Mentions

• Forever Home by Cathy Stenquist
• Mrs. R. Snugglesworth, Attorney-at-Law by Amy Flanagan
• Nature Parade by Nikki Samuels
• Siege of Herons: Collective Nouns Alphabetically by Ramona Wildeman
• The Three Little Pigs and the Rocket Project by Lynne Marie

Middle-Grade/Young Adult

@nervesofsteel by Lyn Fairchild Hawks

Honorable Mentions

• The Red Rebel Extravaganza by Angela Kay

Poetry Collections

Canon Fodder by Jay Sizemore

Honorable Mentions

• Greatness in It All by Lauren Carden

The post Announcing the Winners of the 31st Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards appeared first on Writer's Digest.

[See the complete winner’s list]

Elocution Lesson

by Mary-Jane Holmes

Get recognized for your writing. Find out more about the Writer’s Digest family of writing competitions.

The post Writer’s Digest 92nd Annual Competition Rhyming Poetry First Place Winner: “Elocution Lesson” appeared first on Writer's Digest.

[See the complete winner’s list]

Details and Aftershocks

by Gretchen Ayoub

“The casket you ordered—we had to change it. We needed to special order a new one, since we measured your son—he’s 6’8”. He won’t fit into our regular size.” The funeral director gives me this newest information as gently as he can, speaking softly and slowly. He stops and waits, trained to anticipate any number of reactions. Each time we go over an expense, another item on the list, he does the same thing. Stop, wait, listen. I silently nod agreement. Yes, to the hearse costs. Yes, to the church fees. Yes, to the embalming and body preparation costs. Yes, to the cemetery burial costs. Yes, to the extra-long casket; yes, the color is fine…

The three-part legal-size pre-printed form lists items and services for wakes, funerals, and burials. I approved a similar list fourteen years ago in this same room when I came to bury my husband. He did not need a bigger casket. Right now my vision blurs in and out and I try to focus on what I am about to sign. There are “special” charges that were not on my husband’s bill. Keeping my son’s body at Bay Area Funeral Services. Transport to San Francisco Airport. Flight charges. Transport from Boston’s Logan Airport to the funeral home. These are the costs of flying my boy’s body home. Who are these people who attended to him after the time of death was called, drove his body to the San Francisco airport, loaded him on a plane like cargo freight? Mark, the consummate world traveler, 55 countries and counting, some of which I had to locate on a map, has made his final trip, 3000 miles to Boston.

The funeral director asks if I am ready. I nod again and start to stand up. It is like pushing through cement. He holds the chair with one hand and my elbow with the other, anticipating that I might keel over. He gestures toward the door and leads me to a viewing room, where Mark’s prepared body lies, having arrived two days earlier. “Before you go in, I just want to let you know that we did the best we could. It took a week to bring him home…. that is a long time….”

Eight days earlier, I am driving Mark and his fiancée to the airport after spending a wonderful Fourth of July week together. He has on his favorite T-shirt. It is bright green with a picture of The Grinch across the entire front. He loves Dr. Seuss, and I had given him this shirt years ago. I have countless pictures of him wearing it—on Christmas morning, at his college graduation party, in the various countries he visited. That day at the airport, he embraces me in a final bear hug, this giant of a son with his 5’3” mom. “Love you, call you later!” He and his fiancée walk into the lobby, her taking three steps to his one, as his size 17 1/2 feet swiftly carry him to the door. He holds it open for her. I can still feel that hug.

His fiancée asks that he be buried in his wedding suit, beautifully tailored, charcoal gray in color, that she and her family had custom-made in China, where her parents were born. I agree. When I step into the viewing room, however, I still envision him wearing that Grinch shirt and that mile-wide loving smile. I walk over to the newly delivered extra-long casket. This body with its flesh tone makeup, face frozen in pain, wearing a suit with his hands folded in front of him? This cannot be my thirty-three-year-old son whose infectious enthusiasm, laugh, and kindness permeated every room he entered. Who at any age was still the biggest kid in the room. Whose little nieces and nephews hung on their giant oak tree of an uncle; he was their favorite. Whose photos from all over the world are not stiff and formal, but delightful—a lemur on his head in Madagascar, swaying on the hanging bridges of Costa Rica with his mom, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, exploring ice caves, and hanging out on the edges of waterfalls worldwide. He should be resting peacefully in a Dr. Seuss shirt and a pair of oversized shorts, sporting his big sneakers that he wore when he completed a marathon. To no one, I cry out “What happened? He doesn’t look like Mark at all!” Without turning around, I know that the funeral director is standing a respectful distance back with his hands clasped in front of him, once again prepared. I don’t move but stare. Perhaps if I look long enough, I will once again see my Mark.

Sudden. Cardiac. Arrest. The week before, vacationing with the family, planning the final details of his upcoming wedding in three months. A typical flight back to San Francisco. Waking up the next day with his fiancée. It’s her birthday. They plan a special birthday dinner for that night. “I don’t feel too well.” Head to the hospital. Dead. Hysterical phone call from his fiancée. More phone calls. Frozen in a charcoal gray suit lying in an extra-long casket.

I review these hard facts as I stand over him. None of this aligns with any of Mark’s being. Perhaps the spirit of this Madagascar roamer has gone off to another remote place and left this XL body here, so that we may bury him according to his beloved Syrian Orthodox tradition. I thank the kind funeral director, take the yellow copy of the bill, and go home.

Over the next weeks, I often hear “You’re so strong.” I greet the mourners at the wake, comforting young men and women who are so grief-stricken they are unable to speak. They try to tell me what a great friend he was while breaking down in tears. We hug. I thank them for being here. I turn to the next person in line, a middle school teacher, a former employer from his high school job, work colleagues who have flown in from California, an old friend of mine who I have not seen in fifteen years, his friends from many states and countries. I stand stick straight at the front of the church on the day of the funeral and read his eulogy, written on the plane from Boston to San Francisco that first night when my sister Judy and I flew out to be with his fiancée.

Greeting people, eulogizing, and standing motionless at the gravesite as the muffled tears of those in attendance float around me in the hot July afternoon—that is my body in the sleeveless black dress. But my being is somewhere above, in the high ceilings of the church, in the blue sky above the casket at the cemetery service, outside of the funeral home walls. The shock space. I box up the anguish and put it on some invisible shelf with “do not open until___” scrawled in black marker on the outside.

As the wake begins, I tenderly tuck his gold christening cross and chain into his stiff hands. The funeral director asks me if I want it back when the services are done. “No.” “Are you sure…” as if to clarify that once the casket is closed and in the ground, there is no more asking. Maybe that gold cross will make him seem more like Mark and less like the man in the suit.

The rest of the world keeps moving. I try to organize boxes of his memories in the attic but end up sitting on the creaky, splintered wood floor, realizing that I have been crying for a while, but not making any noise. This is not the mom in the black dress, but the mom who loses track of time next to childhood letters from camp, handmade Mother’s Day and birthday cards with giant hearts, stick figures, and xxx’s and ooo’s and scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings. There are Tupperware bins of holiday decorations including his personalized Christmas stocking knit by my godmother when he was born. It will stay folded in the plastic box.

I open my eyes in the middle of the night, not sure if I was ever really asleep. On my daily walks, sunglasses are essential even when it is dark. Daylight hurts. I sit with my strong morning coffee on the back porch in all weather, staring and thinking. I get up because I must; the constant weight pressing on my chest and legs will otherwise immobilize me. Very few ask anymore, “How are you doing?” and I don’t volunteer. Because if I do, everything may shatter all at once, splintering into thousands of tiny shards. I read articles where experts discuss complicated or prolonged grief disorder, as if grief is a pathology that needs to be cured. All grief is complicated and lasting. It is circular and messy, defying parameters. There is no order.

Four years later, there are still times where I cannot attend a party, a holiday event, or a family gathering. It is too suffocating. Some wonder what happened to that early strong woman; she is no longer easy to find. They are curious as to why I cannot muster the will to be present and to find joy, why it is so hard to be with those fully living. And I do not expect that they would understand why. The old adages resurface: time to move on, time to heal, time to do “what he’d want you to do.” Sometimes, I watch others who have suffered unexpected loss and their eyes have that look; the one caught between trying to be present, but realizing that they are in a moment that will never be for the one who has died.

Sudden death produces shock, which provides a temporary coating, allowing for compartmentalization and dissociation to take over. That coating can peel off, then regenerate. There is a frozen river that I see when I am walking in the woods in the winter months. The top seems impenetrable, yet the water still flows fast underneath, churning below the surface, as if ready to break through at any moment. How long that ice will stay firm is unpredictable. It could be all winter or it could crack due to a couple of unexpectedly warm days. Freeze, thaw, refreeze. That is the longer, quieter sequence of sudden loss.

It has not even begun.

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Batgirl’s Last Ride

by Nancie Erhard

It looks like a solid brick wall but wait—are those cracks? A secret exit reveals itself, swinging down like a drawbridge. Out zooms a masked girl riding a motorcycle, her cape billowing away from her shoulders like wings. It’s Batgirl!

I narrated the scene and sang the theme song music to myself, Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, as I hit the pedals and scooted out of the carport. There was no secret exit because there was no real wall, and it was a girl’s blue Schwinn bike instead of a motorcycle, so I had to make my own Vroom, Vrooms. With a glance to be sure that no cars were coming, I barrelled full speed down the short driveway into the street. I had to get away from the house as fast as I could so no one could guess my secret identity. Especially not Jan. I pedaled in the opposite direction from her house.

I had cobbled together Batgirl’s disguise: a leotard on which I’d stuck the bat symbol cut out of yellow contact paper, plus tights, a scalloped cape from an old skirt, a headband to which I attached little bat ears, and a dime-store mask. Halloween was over, but I wore this getup outside anyway. Jan would have looked at me from bat ears to sneakers, sniffed, and said something like, “Well, look at you! But aren’t you a little old to play dress up?” The girls who buzzed around her like flies around spoiled fruit would snicker behind their hands. I wouldn’t be a teenager for a few months yet, but I guess my Batgirl disguise would seem childish to someone who already wore a bra and makeup, shaved her legs, and taped up her school uniform hem well above her knees. It would be childish, that is, if I were playing dress-up.

Was Yvonne Craig playing dress-up in her role as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl? Or Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura, the only female with a speaking role on the crew of the starship Enterprise? I wasn’t playing dress up, I was rehearsing, no—doing improv. It was too bad that I didn’t have anyone to do improv with anymore, the way I did in the drama class I went to on Saturdays last year. But why should I let that stop me? I could at least imagine I was part of a Dynamic Trio.

Batgirl didn’t wait for an invitation. She dared to insert herself and prove her worth, even rescuing a captive Batman and Robin, more than once. Batgirl didn’t need superpowers, just her brain, an impressive kick, and some clever technology, like a compact with a laser beam, to cause some “delightful, dynamic, destruction!” for the bad guys. Sure, the live-action TV version of the comic books (with its ridiculous villains and WHAMs and POWs in the fight scenes) was silly, but I loved its wordplay.

Jan would not be impressed. Before she arrived, with the exception of Geri’s cousin, the girls in my class had known each other since kindergarten. We weren’t saints; there were squabbles and hurt feelings. But nothing cruel. I was the first to sit next to Jan and talk to her, to make a new girl feel welcome, but she soon pronounced me “too dorky.” And her comments about others had me noticing things I never gave a thought before like how greasy Geri’s hair was— “Gross. Hasn’t she heard of shampoo?”—or that Annie wore orthopedic shoes. We went from all being “us” to “us” and “them,” “in” or “out,” in a matter of weeks.

The mission I had invented for Batgirl was rescuing my older brother. He’s listed as Missing in Action, the narrator intoned, this time with Walter Cronkite’s voice in my head. He could be wounded, a P.O.W.—or worse. The voice changed to Batman’s narrator. What’s this? Batgirl is going behind enemy lines? Holy Hanoi, what are you thinking, Batgirl?

My brother wasn’t missing in action. He hadn’t even been drafted. But it could happen soon. He had made it into junior college, and under the old rules, he would have had a deferment. But they changed to a lottery system. They said it would be fairer, and for people born in his year, the lottery would happen next summer. Even though I’d conjured this rescue scenario for Batgirl, I couldn’t picture him—his gymnast’s build, high cheekbones, sharp jawline, and warm amber eyes—shorn of his thick, collar-length brown hair and dressed in a uniform.

I didn’t have to imagine hostile forces in the neighborhood. For as long as I could remember, the favorite game among the boys had been War. Girls were banned from the game except as targets, so it was never clear to me which side was which, how the players could tell who won, or even knew when the game was over. It didn’t seem to end. Batgirl knows where nests of snipers might be lurking, so she has to choose her route carefully. My eyes darted to the known bivouacs of garbage cans and hedges; I was ready to divert or abort at any sign of an ambush. I flew down one hill and made it up the next where I turned into a cul-de-sac, the street where my current crush lived, just in case I could glimpse him.

“Finding” my brother wounded but alive, I imagined Batgirl freeing him. I could almost feel him holding onto me as he rode on the back of Batgirl’s motorcycle while, evading ambush again, she brought him home.

Over the winter, my brother moved in with some friends, but he still came home regularly. He was a math whiz and good at sports, both things that were not my strengths. But he struggled more than I did with writing, and sometimes he asked me to look over his papers before he handed them in, to check his spelling and grammar. He was cool enough to ask for help from a little sister. Most guys would be too stuck up.

College seemed so much more interesting than seventh grade. Except Miss Slama’s class. Four days a week we studied history—this year it was the American Revolution—but on Fridays, we put the desks in a circle and discussed current events. We studied popular song lyrics alongside Time and Newsweek, and we were supposed to watch the evening news. I did that already. I would sit on the floor in front of the TV. Along with my heated-up frozen pizza, fish sticks, or Swanson TV dinners, I ingested images of a river on fire in Cleveland, the atrocities at My Lai, napalm explosions, police attacking protesters.

That winter I turned thirteen, and by the spring the war had breached a border. Soldiers shot college students like my brother, at a protest in Kent, Ohio. Four died. A girl knelt on the pavement beside one of them with her arms outstretched, pleading. She was just a year older than me. She looked a bit like me, too.

My brother had marked my becoming a teenager by taking me to the concert of my choice as a birthday gift. From the concerts available, I chose to see Neil Diamond. To my surprise my brother enjoyed the show. We didn’t always agree on things.

In fact, we argued a lot. By this time our arguments had evolved into something more than sibling fights over who would get the last piece of chocolate cake. When Miss Slama had us hold a mock debate over the American Revolution, as if we were alive at the time, I realized that’s what my brother and I were doing. We were debating. It could be about almost anything, from what he wrote in his college papers to whether or not Bob Dylan was a genius. He said, “Listen to Beethoven’s Fifth. That’s genius.” I had to admit he was right about Beethoven, but that didn’t make me wrong about Dylan. My brother would never let me get away with arguing for or against something based on emotion. I had to have solid reasons. He was all for logic, like Mr. Spock. (I watched Star Trek because he liked Star Trek.) Unlike anyone else in the family, it mattered to him what I thought. Deep discussions didn’t happen with my parents or sisters, ever.

One topic we never touched, though, was the war.

I wanted to ask him about it, to know where he stood, to discover what I thought as we slammed questions around. Is there a time for war? Or was it, as the song said, good for “absolutely nothing?” Surely some things were worth fighting for—human rights, freedom, defending the innocent and weak. But was that what we were doing? Were we fighting for something worth sending my brother? I knew I couldn’t raise such questions without getting swamped by feelings. I couldn’t put out of my head the images of dead women and children and old people in trenches, of thatched huts set ablaze with flamethrowers, jungles turned black with poison. Our soldiers did this, not an enemy. I couldn’t even whisper it: What if we were the bad guys?

We inched closer to Lottery Day. One night, I heard my brother’s Volkswagen put-put into the driveway, so I started down the hall to see him. I heard him say hi to Dad, who must have been sitting at the kitchen table with his beer and cigarettes, rather than in his recliner, waiting.

Dad didn’t say hi. Without any preamble, he said, “Son, if you’re called and you don’t go, don’t come back. You don’t have a home here.”

I froze and retreated.

My brother had always looked up to Dad. As the only two males in the household, they shared something my sisters and I weren’t part of. I thought they were a team. I imagine my brother did, too, until that moment.

The lottery took place on a Wednesday. My brother wasn’t home; I didn’t know where he was. I was relieved I could watch it on TV—ABC carried it nation-wide, live—without him in the room. Men in suits rotated and rotated two big drums, like bingo. One drum had capsules with the dates of the year, the other the numbers 1-365. They drew a capsule from each drum, and young men with that birthdate would have the corresponding number assigned; the lowest numbers would be the first to be drafted. The news said that “youths” with numbers below 124 were sure to be called up, but also that the White House estimated the cut-off number could go as high as 245. When they drew my brother’s birthday, I hid my face in my hands and peeked through my fingers.

251. My brother was safe.

But it was only a matter of luck. Other families weren’t so lucky.

I never rode out as Batgirl again; the leotard and tights got too small. Besides, both Batman and Star Trek had been cancelled. I didn’t care. They felt repetitive. Here’s another brawl with clownish villains and their thugs; there’s one more battle with the Romulans. I longed for a different kind of story, but I couldn’t have said what that was.

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