Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction A majestic lioness bears down upon a helpless young antelope. The carcass of its mauled mother sprawled, bloody, nearby. The tawny calf stands motionless – paralyzed by fear or too innocent to comprehend death – as the powerful jaws close around its delicate neck. However, surprisingly, … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction My city-boy-turned-country-boy wants us to move but how can I go? I’ve lived here through bombs, heatwaves, riots. Recessions, states of emergency, killer viruses. Nothing mars my devotion. The City can survive anything, and that makes me feel like I can too. My body has absorbed … Read more
Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction Wish Fairy: Tell me again. You: It’s the lecture I’ll give when I’m forty-three. My wife will give me a blow job that morning. Then I’ll catch that early cab. I’ll notice my suit fits me exceptionally well. Mingling will feel better than it ever has … Read more
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Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books SPRING 1.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The Cantacuzene Family Crest (Quae Nocent Docent – What Harms, Teaches) Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books PROLOGUE The Waters Off Greenland September 1899 The steamship surges forward, its prow lifting and falling over the swells of the North Atlantic.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Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books I.I The first eight years of Dai’s life smelled like stone.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