ISSUE 157
CONTEST
WINNERS
John Steinbeck Award for Fiction
Alice Hatcher is the author of The Wonder That Was Ours (Dzanc, 2018), long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Award. Hatcher’s fiction has appeared in journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Pleiades, The Masters Review, and Post Road. Hatcher teaches at the Tucson branch of the Writers Studio.
Gabriele Rico Challenge for Nonfiction
Amelia Skinner Saint (she/her) is a writer and professor living in the Midwest. Her writing has won the Lorian Hemingway award, H. E. Francis award, and has been published in Cutthroat, Barnstormer, Storyscape, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram @SkinnerOrSaint mostly sharing pictures of cats, dogs, and children.
Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry
Marina Kraiskaya is a Ukrainian-American writer and the editor of the journal Bicoastal Review. She has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best New Poets. Find her poetry and nonfiction in Poetry International, Southeast Review, Mississippi Review, L.A. Review, Zone 3, The Shore, EcoTheo, Deep Wild, Leavings, and other journals. She lives by the sea in San Diego with her two cats. mkraiskaya.com
Mary Blair Award for
Art
BENJII (Ben Bui, originally from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) is a visual artist based in Toronto, Canada, who studies drawing and painting at OCAD University. His neosurrealist paintings uncover the ambivalence between modern melancholy, ambitions, and the gravity of drama in art through evocative figurations and the poetic stages they inhabit.
Emerging Voices Contest
Elina Kumra Elina Kumra, a 17-year-old high school student from San José, California, is a published writer with accolades from Scholastic Art and Writing, Up North Lit, Writer's Digest, StreetLit, Coffin Bell, Peauxdunque Review, Polyphony Lit, and Reed Magazine. She is the editor for her own literary magazine.