Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction I have never been the kind of woman to worry about men, except when they’re over seventy-percent ugly. Then, I’m in trouble. It’s always been that way, since the first greasy boy made his hunched-backed debut in my elementary school, and there was no growing … Read more
Each round, as we watch the entries arrive, anticipation grows as we move closer to the judging period: We see snippets of creative works which whet our appetite, and an excited buzz begins to thrum from the tips of the toes to the points of our ears. What a thrill! We imagine each entrant putting … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry Dinner The fundamental misunderstanding is that we sit across from one another in easy companionship – childhood friends meeting once monthly. Tonight, I drag my armfuls of ghosts out for agonyand beef tips, some goulash squash.The conversation focuses, as usual,on you, your boyfriend, your job, your recent shopping spree and … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry Reverence Mannequins smiled behind the soiled windowsof a second hand shop as a procession of pilgrimsfiled stiffly by on the feast day of Corpus Christi.Silent, sprawling street people stared and pointed. The procession paraded behind a white canopyheld high by four pilgrims under which the priestdisplayed … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry homesick there was this inexplicable feeling while i was therethat i now recall and cravelike someone asphyxiated, gasping for airin fact, i’m not sure i’ve been able to breathesince i left a cotton sweatshirt with mismatched patchesa september breeze, cool but comfortingthat fills my car as … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction Babies don’t stop being sick on holidays. Jen shifted in her seat at the breakroom table. Ten straight hours on her feet and yet somehow she’d found the one chair that made sitting just as uncomfortable. She scrolled through photos on Instagram, only stopping to … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction Features Gun Violence The children, they wept. The sterile white collection room and stern uniforms of the phlebotomists always elicited this reaction. Mr. Brenner frowned. They only needed a few drops of blood and a scan of their hand for biometric matching. It didn’t need … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction The same week I get myself kicked out of high school for putting the youngest Smoll brother in the hospital, Chardelle starts going scatty in the brain. The Randy Codd Fair comes to town and me and her are spinning upside down in the Orbiter. … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books Chapter One: A Morning Shift Leadville Colorado, June 29, 1893 From where Frances Byrne stood, Mount Massive was an inch tall. With her eyes narrowed, her fingers pinched to measure it, she plucked the beast mountain out of its range and set it in … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books ‘The First God stepped forward and in his footprint our universe began. As the print reflects its maker, in time, his impression filled our universe with new gods, and turned the inanimate into life, and brought man and animal up from the soil. Into this … Read more