This year’s contest saw a 160% increase in submissions. Readers, editors, and judges were blown away by the quality of the submissions. Both judges expressed how difficult it was to make their selections from among the stunning poems and stories we received. We are so thankful to everyone who trusted us with their work for this contest, and our huge congratulations to the winners.
Poetry Results as judged by Karyna McGlynn
Winner: “When you ask why there are so many names for God” by Krupa Harishankar
“I kept coming back to this poem for the way it understands naming and spirit as something tactile—something you can taste, hold, pass hand to hand. The language is lush without ever tipping into decorative excess. Each image carries real, sacred weight: saffron steeping, earthworm sluice, hard raisins. What I admire most is how the poem resists the urge to resolve its central question. Instead, it keeps opening up—into language, into various forms of devotion, into the quiet ache of inheritance. It feels deeply rooted and yet porous at the edges, a poem that knows some things can only be approached sideways, through sound and texture and love.”
Runner-Up: “This is a poem about desire” by Madeleine Poole
“This poem locked in early for me and didn’t let go. The invisible fence is such a clean, brutal engine here, and the poet trusts it. It does its work without over-explaining. Line by line, the poem tightens, mapping the strange negotiations between power, money, touch, and selfhood with a kind of icy precision. There’s no wasted motion here. What stays with me is the way the poem implicates the speaker without collapsing into pure confession or absolution; it just holds the tension steady and makes you sit inside it. Unsettling in the best way.”
Finalists: Jesse Watson, Cora Schipa, Janine Certo, Beste Yilmaz, Seth Peterson, John Muellner, Elaina Edwards, Emiliana Renuart
Fiction Results as judged by Dustin M. Hoffman
Winner: “Cuties” by Michael Cullinane
“‘Cuties’ glimmers its sequins of style with punchy prose. Sentences that seem at first like humor end up crushing us as the sequins flip to reveal their razor-sharp side. The story dives deep into the mind of this high-school teacher’s psyche that’s straining for last threads of optimism on her first day back at work after trying to recover from a carjacking. The details of the work bleed with authenticity as we encounter the bored, desensitized teenagers, apathetic coworkers, and a hilariously bombastic guidance counselor who administers a hackneyed exam about the titular cuties. But summarizing the splendid details or trying to recap the perfectly paced day-at-work plot does little justice to this marvelous story. The writer draws us so close to Tina’s interiority in a way that makes so much room for sympathy in a character’s raw moment back to work, fresh from trauma. This masterful writer doesn’t waste a single syllable in crafting a story with such strong voice and such immediacy.”
Runner-Up: “Millboro’s Least Wanted” by Sammi Chiyao
“This writer’s style has that flowing-water clarity that steps aside to make room for brilliantly complex characterization. The relationship between the narrator and her friend is full of wounding that the writer escalates in scenes of exchanged honesty that turn to jabs. Though the narrator shows up for her friend during a moment of vulnerability, during abortion clinic visits, the emotional scars turn to calluses. I especially appreciated the nuance of the narrator’s care that she desires to offer her friend, yet their painful pasts continue to divide them. This story masterfully explores smalltown culture and its strangling racism in both past and present to capture this moment between friends that is both moving and tragic. Here is a writer deeply attuned to characters desperately needing to be seen by each other.”
Honorable Mention: “Silk” by Qing Qing Chen
“The prose’s style is stunning—the decadent details of tourist trappings and consumerism captured in the daringly intimate psychic distance. That closeness allows us to travel through this cluttered setting on this day right along with the main character on her flaneuse adventure. The story leaves us in delicious ambiguity when the narrator is confronted with the awareness of being fooled. But we and she also get to luxuriate, to wear silk, without being told our attention is misplaced.”
Finalists: Sophie Aanerud, Corin Michael Mellone, Natalie Moore, Brad Eddy, Kevin Binder