Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction The man sat in his chair, staring straight ahead, unblinking. A passerby might find this strange: the rigidity of his back, the thinness of his mouth, and the look in his eyes, reminiscent of a man heading into combat. They might wonder why a young man … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction A panting wolfhound. A lovers’ parting kiss. A giant’s severed head. The drifting clouds above the fairies’ hawthorn sprang to life in his mind’s eye. “Get up, ye lazy sod!” Ned’s raven-haired mam planted her boot squarely on his backside and Ned tumbled down the mound, … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books SPRING 1. In the beginning was C/r. If a bond pays a periodic payment of C in perpetuity, its value is cash flow divided by the interest rate. Assume yearly payments of $100 and an interest rate of 5%. That bond is worth $100/.05, or $2,000. Every other cash-flow … Read more
The Cantacuzene Family Crest (Quae Nocent Docent – What Harms, Teaches) Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books PROLOGUE The Waters Off Greenland September 1899 The steamship surges forward, its prow lifting and falling over the swells of the North Atlantic. At each new wave, the ship hesitates and shudders, leaning backward towards America, … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books I.I The first eight years of Dai’s life smelled like stone. Like the smoky musk of sunbaked battlements and the salty nip of sea-soaked tunnels. And they smelled like gonalei, the roots of the bone white gona flower that grew in abundance at the base of … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction For a few seconds I was disoriented, unable to focus in the shadows. “Come over here, please,” Tamara said. I stepped around chunks of fallen plaster and joined her. “Can you see it now?” she said. “Yes, I see. What do you call that big one?” “My … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction The True-Life Story of Mari Carmen Flores Aizpuru, Partner and Lover to Famed Spanish Abstract Painter Bonifacio Alfonso. In 1964, as Spain was thirty years deep under the rule of Francoism, a poor painter came to sit at the table of a well-heeled couple who owned a popular … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry Rebecca Loggia has been writing stories since childhood, eventually earning a degree in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. Her work has been published in the Santa Clara Review, Allegory Ridge, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, and elsewhere. Her essay, “How to Rewrite a Medical … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry A thread of birds pulledfrom the shorn field becomesa scarf knit by the wind,intertwining the branches, flowingastride the bare necks of trees then expands to a needlepoint shawlthrown wild within the October aircovering the grey and brown shoulders of low hillsagainst the coming cold then explodes, full as … Read more
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