Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry No magic roundabout reverie herethe anti ice cream van haunts the suburbssinging scrap iron, any old iron A tannoy trumpets a thin melodya voice singing with a scrape of scrap metalno magic round about here A Bedford van drives slowly down the streeta hawker sings, walking aheadscrap … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books Doug & Lisa – September 9, 2013: The McCloud Falls In September of 2013, after seven years of dating, Doug and I rented an RV and took a trip we referred to as, “Around Mount Shasta in Seven Days.” The journey was supposed to rebuild … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books 1. Feather She hesitated at the fork. One branch ran inland a little way, then hugged the perimeter of the wheat fields where the harvesters had been and gone, scraping the landscape raw. In a couple of weeks, the diggers and then the fertilising machines … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction I don’t know if she always meant it to sound just like every 17th century Slavic fairytale, but her stories too were sinister, expansive and striding; allegorical and feminine, with any resolution not much more than a dissolve into history. Dense, wild land. A peasant girl … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction A slipped disc, that’s what most people call it. Sounds harmless, like a pulled muscle or a headache. Doctors refer to it as a herniated disc or a prolapsed disc. It still doesn’t sound serious or painful. It’s not like a ‘broken leg’ or a ‘defective … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction Long Distance Call Offerings Gone She smiles the way the kids do when they knock somebody down at recess. “Order anything you want!” she says, opening her arms like the picture where Cinderella gets to be the queen. She winks at me when I order oatmeal … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction *I found a human.* A deceptively simple sentence. Its words are paltry and weak–too small for the meaning they contain. An equivalently insufficient collection of words: I dropped the bomb. Or: I fell in love. This is why humans invented more words, and spent so … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction There had been a rumour that Roan’s bed moved in the night. That was all. Roan went to sleep to one side of his unclean and sort of dark and generally disagreeable bedroom and woke up on the other. Like, it was unmistakable. His bed … Read more
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
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