9th Annual Contest Results!

Oct 16, 2013Archive, News

BWR is pleased to announce the winners of our 9th Annual Contest in Prose, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Each winner will receive $1000.00 prize and publication in issue 40.2 of BWR (forthcoming this spring).

Mari Christmas was selected as the fiction winner for her story, “Baby.” Fiction judge Brian Evenson writes:

“Baby” manages to mesh the otherwordly with the day-to-day in a way that feels at once natural and uncanny. Nice colloquial dialogue collides with the post-death experience in a way that I found at once startling and smart. Echoes of new fabulism here, but differently applied. It’s a wonderful story.

Mary Hannah Aizenman was selected as the poetry winner for her poem “History, or Umbilicus.” Poetry judge Kate Durbin says:

“History, or Umbilicus” turns the geography of the poem into the body of a girl. The girl, of course, is a problem, her place in his-story both bounded and uncertain. The problem of the girl is a dead weight, like the weights they used to tie to alleged witches in early America, to then throw them into the lake, or like that of an umbilical cord, magical talisman, which both sustains life and strangles it. “History, or Umbilicus” tells her-story of either/or, girl as cave, hole, mouth, grave. Her-story could be a doomed love tale, or the echo of a dead girl who will never be born. While reading, these possibilities (and more) lodged under my skin, and I am haunted.

 Meredith Clark was selected as the nonfiction winner for her essay “Lyrebird.” Nonfiction judge Jenny Boully says:

So frequently is the second person used in creative composition, but it so infrequently cuts perfectly or strikes as deep a chord as it does in “Lyrebird.” The essay slowly circles its heartbreak through understatement, poetic revelation, imagistic accord. It admits to its shortcomings gracefully, knows there is no way to write what cannot be undone. “Lyrebird” is a deeply affecting gathering, a nest, an accumulation of the fragments of what could have been.

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We are also happy to announce the following finalists for each genre. Thank you all for submitting! This was a year full of amazing work.

Fiction finalists:
Chad B. Anderson
Yanara Friedland
Kristen Iskandrian
Sara Jaffe
Bruno Nelson
Anne Ray
T. D. Storm

Poetry finalists:
Diana Arterian
Kelly Connor
Matthew Fee
Maggie Glover and Isaac Pressnell
Lauren Hilger
Cate Lycurgus
Emily Moore
Jayme Russell
Brittney Scott

Nonfiction finalists:
Colin Bassett
Dong Li
Jacqueline Lyons
Leah Poole Osowski
Allie Rowbottom
Shawn Wen