Guest Judge Maurice Carlos Ruffin has chosen his grand prize winner and the 16 finalists! We’re excited to publish all sixteen of these stories starting in January 2025! Grand Prize Winner: One Minute Thirty-Five Seconds by Caleb Ludwick Guest Judge Maurice Carlos Ruffin said, “Deftly captures a relationship in the aftermath of a life-changing moment…
Elena cried for the sparrow, for how it slipped a squeal before it hit the front window, a sound that awfully resembled fear. I knew even then that Elena saw something in that bird, a part of herself that wanted to be free and alive, free of everything that crippled its wings, and it was…
Not in the mirror. Not in between his uncle’s years-ago fingers. Not running all over town like Gogol. Just something he could hold in his hands for once in his life. He tried last month to see his heart. After so many years, he wanted to see the actual scars on it, the ones that…
Stepmother, Not Mother, Mother
Stepmother locks Daughter in the basement, chain keeping her prisoner to the furnace. Daughter tries to reach the window where Mother might be, watching, waiting for a kiss. Mother is there until she isn’t. Until Stepmother pulls them apart. Until the policeman takes Mother away. In the window, there is Mother, lips pressed to the…
School Days
They left the couch, a show about child prodigies gone insane in their twenties, and in her room he pulled loose her knotted drawstrings. Outside, snow. Frost clinging to power lines like cake piping, a blizzard fooling everyone and, for once, lingering. She breathed in and nodded, the hair under his palm short and prickly…
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