With enormous excitement today we bring to our reading and writing community the winners of The Letter Review Prize January – March 2025.
This has been one of the most astonishingly difficult rounds we have judged due to the remarkably high quality of the submissions. We never lose sight of how lucky we are to be able to read these beautiful new literary works, each one in search of an exciting new home. For us as readers and judges, this is a welcome task. We thank each writer who took the time to submit to The Letter Review, and we continue to extend our sincere thanks for thinking of this publication as a suitable home for your writing. We appreciate how much time and effort it takes to craft these entries, and we thank you for sharing them with us.
We saw more science fiction than ever before in the Short Fiction category, much of it tackling emerging issues related to AI. Fiction pieces which were thematically complex, while remaining easily (and pleasantly) digestible, continued to leap out. Stories which are deeply human, deeply felt, while remaining intellectually fascinating and satisfying were a joy to read.
We saw a wonderful variety of poetic offerings: We continue to be grateful for comedic entries. Work that wonderfully captures either the zeitgeist, or a particular experience, or a powerful emotional state gripped our attention this time.
In the Nonfiction category we were fascinated by authors who appeared to be wrestling with nearly unsolvable conundrums: Asking questions. Puzzling. Unravelling. Picking at threads. In our Books category works stood out in this round that felt deeply personal, deeply revealing: We often came away from the awarded entries with the feeling of having learned something new.
We’re beyond thrilled at the thought of our community members reading through these winning entries: It was such a treat to revisit them all one more time today. We hope you enjoy!
Short Fiction
Winners
Shortlist
- Karen Bremer Masuda – Through the Stomach to the Heart
- Elliot Smith – When the Clocks Hit Zero
- Joe Rosser – The Motor Race Dance Floor Orgy
- Taylor Brown – Rise, River, Rise
- Caitlin A. Quinn – Cheiromancy
- Dr. Steven Decknick – The Hero
- Philip Belcastro – The Deer
- Lena Hari – Echolocation
- E. M. Dasche – Winning
- James O’Meara – Fishing
Poetry
Winners
- Sarah Mirabile-Blacker – #1, #2, & #3
- Cameron Boggs – Ins and Outs (what I implore you to embrace and what I beg you to reject)
- Dominik Slusarczyk – Black Clock
- Adam Ryan Stailey – Ol’ Nanner Vampire
Shortlist
- Sheetal Potdar – Poles apart
- Tracy Thompson – Complicit
- Sara Patricia Kelly – Spicy Orange Juice March
- Magda Romanska – Such a Pretty Cripple Girl
- Adriana Beltrano – Ode to Chest Hair
- Betty Benson – 36 Views of Grief
- Jennifer M. Phillips – Memory Rising
- Danna DeKay – East of Childhood
- Binh Herdrick – Unbroken
- Aadhira Vellala – An Extinguished Star?
- Ron VanHooser – Trials of the Sea
- Kammi Sheeler – Half-
- Kelly Granito – Elegy
- Sydney Seto – And Let All the Water Fall at Once
- Cayenne – The Smell of You
- Robert Eugene Rubino – Devil of a Snowball Fight
- Antonia Frech – Where I Hope to Bloom
- Dr. Christopher Choi – Rx
- Michael Lavers – Nevertheless
- William Parks – Hit-And-Run Love
- Joseph J. Norris – The skyscrapers were lonely
- Beth Politsch – Fishing
Nonfiction
Winners
- Alison Foster – Steak Tartare
- Nikos Alexakos – Playing with Fire
- Andreia Kaehl – A Tale of Two Benches
Shortlist
- William Parks – The Teratoma Man
- Patricia Knight Meyer – Infant Of
- Ken Kelly – Re-reading Jack London
- Sam Sharp – Why Do I Hunt
- Michael Raymond – Memory and Music: Hiding on the Backstreets
- Omar Shaker – It Started with Grandma
- Natasha Chiam – First Wound
- Hampton Williams Hofer – Like a Mother
Unpublished Books
Winners
Shortlist
- Marc Pappalardo – A Trace of Blue
- Jack Durant – Breaker of Horses
- Matt Deller – 5150 4 U
- Keith Richards – Which Of Your Sons?
- Toby Litt – The Very Beautiful
- Penny Milam – Southern Craft
- Ana María Caballero – /Cuts