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
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