Fractured Lit Reprint Prize Winners and Shortlisted stories

1st Place: Tiny Little Goat by Jasmine Sawers

Admittedly, I am a sucker for a funny/sad story that succeeds. It’s a rare beast, as the line between comedy and tragedy is a treacherous one indeed. In “Tiny Little Goat”, one of the shorter stories on the shortlist, I was thrilled by the writer’s darkly humorous use of imagery and metaphor, and I was deeply impressed by how skilfully and quietly this delicate story made me care about the grief-saturated narrator.. Here, a broken love story lives entirely beneath the words, and the reader is entrusted to know it. Masterfully crafted and with a true miniaturist’s pen, this is a surreal and yet all-too-real story about the most lethal kind of heartbreak, a story about not being able to let go. Every sentence, every word, fights for its life. There are many lines that made me laugh aloud, and yet the effect of the story is tragic. The story is compressed so much, yet the heft of it is enormous. I found this weird tale of a character with a tiny goat stuck in their heart as a perfect model of what the flash fiction form can accomplish. ~Meg Prokrass

2nd Place: Boy by Tochukwu Okafor

“Boy” is a breathless one-sentence story that pushes out like a train with its unstoppable narrative flow. It’s a story about being stuck in one’s role and it’s also a story about learning from what we grow up with and quietly bursting out of that prison. It has an ambitious reach and feels as much like a film or novel as it does like a flash. So much of the brilliance in this story resides in how the writer makes the reader feel deeply confided in. I found myself fascinated with the brilliant way this story is told as well as with the unforgettable characters, that leap off the page and unsettle the reader. I am also a sucker for a coming-of-age flash with a happy ending so well earned. ~Meg Pokrass

3rd Place: A Middle Finger Flipped on a School Bus by Davon Loeb

“A Middle Finger Flipped on a School Bus” is a mysterious story and one that I kept rereading as a way to remain lost again in its spell, to linger there just a little bit longer. It’s the story of a teacher who befriends a juvenile outsider, who takes them under his wing. It is also a story of the blight of childhood and how the most difficult children are ultimately the most lonely. I admire the way this writer shows us that two bruised souls will sometimes, even in the most unlikely circumstances, connect in such a way that we feel it may save a life, or possibly two lives. This is a story about being authentically seen. It is a deeply beautiful story. ~Meg Pokrass

Shortlist:

1. Attaboy Louis by Shastri Akella
2. Mother’s Keeper by Vincent Anioke
3. Before by Joy Baglio
4. What Will We Do With All This Grief by April Bradley
5. The Good Hours by Desiree Cooper
6. Shore by Rebecca Entel
7. No Rhyme Nor Reason by Jude Higgins
8. Castaways by Kathryn Kulpa
9. A Middle Finger Flipped on a School Bus by Davon Loeb
10. Horse Poor by Alexander Lumans
11. Flight Path by Fiona Mackintosh
12. Out from Behind a Rock by K.C. Mead-Brewer
13. More Than an Acquired Taste by Shareen K. Murayama
14. Boy by Tochukwu Okafor
15. Undercurrents by Gillian O’Shaughnessy
16. All You’ve Heard is True by Melissa Ragsly
17. Valentine Springs by Daniel Rodriguez
18. Tiny Little Goat by Jasmine Sawers
19. For Better, For Worse by Kathryn Silver-Hajo
20. Fat Man by Andrew Stancek
21. Gregor Mendel Never Knew My Father by Kristin Tenor
22. Matthew’s Ninth Birthday by Anamyn Turowski
23. If Daphne Still Had a Mouth by Nora Wagner
24. The Boy Bandit by Sasha Wolff
25. Saltwater Dog by Vivian Zhu
26. Mr. Ambrosio Is an Idiot by George Choundas