My Brave Little Boy – New Fiction by Joseph Friesen

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

Pizza Friday – New Short Fiction by Elias J. Hurst

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

She’s All Right – New Fiction by G. S. Arnold

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

The Sleepers – A New Novel Extract by Molly Sturdevant

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books Chapter One: A Morning Shift Leadville Colorado, June 29, 1893             From where Frances Byrne stood, Mount Massive was an inch tall.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

Above Instinct – A New Novel Extract by James Walker

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books ‘The First God stepped forward and in his footprint our universe began.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

Beyond Adversity – New Nonfiction by Connie Larson

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction Chapter 1: Twenty Years I wanted to be back on the deck by the water’s edge, sitting there watching the flaming sun cast mirrors on the water – watch it disappear leaving us quiet in the vapor of dusk. Where was I? How many years had … Read more

The Shepherd – New Nonfiction by Ali Schofield

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction I squint at the contents of my closet in the dim morning light. What does one wear to their boyfriend’s intervention? I’ve thought about this intermittently all week, and yet here I am, morning of, and I still don’t know. Bright colours don’t seem appropriate, and … Read more

J is for Jillian – New Nonfiction by Agatha Zarzycki

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction This is a personal essay about grief and friendship written in 26 paragraphs. Each paragraph begins with a letter corresponding to the alphabet, which reflects both the fragmentation and continuity of grief. The format is inspired by Ruth E. Dickey’s “Alphabet Soup Kitchen,” an essay published … Read more

Keep Your Hands on the Reins – New Poetry by Daan Spijer

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry A strapping young stockman lay dying,as strapping young stockman will,and, although he knew he was close to death,his face it was smiling still.For weeks he’d been mustering cattle,steering them by the stars.But, because he’d been at the bottle,he confused fair Venus for Mars.The reins lay slack … Read more

Berceuse – New Poetry by Brent Schaeffer

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry – August 2018, Western Washington Wildfires Haze of wild fire: I wade through goose poopand corrugations of lake surf to my daughter.She sits on a damp shipping palette and gumsgritty watermelon rinds.       Flies and partiesonly live one day, she says. My mother walks away.My father … Read more