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First Prize - $1000 A coming-of-age story about the death of a young daredevil, and the impact it has on the people around him. The structure, style and detail are marvels of professionalism. |
Ace Halloran hated dust. At least once a mile, he'd prove it by cranking down the window on his old Ford pickup, and hawking a spit into the teeth of the Idaho wind. Even at ten, I saw the pointlessness of his efforts. Every time he opened the window, more than enough dust boiled in to make up for what he cleared out of his throat. Now and again, I looked over at Dad who was riding shotgun to get his reaction, but all he ever did was smile, nod towards Ace, and go on singing under his breath about something called crawfish pie. His message was quiet, but clear: it was Mr. Halloran's pickup and he had a right to handle the dust problem any way he saw fit. Besides, it didn't really matter. So much bentonite dust boiled up through the the floorboards and door seams of Ace's old rattletrap, a blizzard of grit filled the cab all the time anyway. And, since it was a long haul out to the Waterman place, watching Dad's scraggly-haired friend do things one-handed helped to pass the time. (more ...) |
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Second Prize - $200 A tense story of a woman subject to mental collapse, who tries to
prove herself by joining her oil-executive husband in Jakarta. |
Arlene Adams sat at the table in her Borabudur Hotel room. Now and then she riffled her fingers through her short, bleached hair. Now and then she traced a design on her perspiring glass. Now and then she re-read the open page of the book before her. Finally, she made some notes. Finally, she opened an oval pillbox and chased two tiny pills down with iced tea. To
make sure she had it right, she picked up the American Women's Association guidebook and
read aloud: "Saving face is extremely important in Indonesia. If you must reprimand a
servant, don't embarrass him in front of your guests or your other servants. Even if you
are ready to explode, never yell. This is on a par with a slap on the face. Any direct
confrontation is acutely embarrassing to most Indonesians." |
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by Leo Haber Third Prize - $50 A coming-of-age story that asks the question: Is God like Hitler in
that he takes innocent life indiscriminately? |
I came down with a heavy bronchial cough one year to the day after my Bar Mitzvah and on the very day that my mother went to the hospital to give birth to her third child, a baby girl, my little sister. My father tended to me in her absence. When on the third day of my illness the cough hadn't disappeared in spite of my taking medicine prescribed by a doctor, my father took matters into his own hands. He put together a concoction that his own parents had given him when he was a child: the yellow of eggs, one squeezed lemon, one spoon of honey, and two or three teaspoons of sugar, all mixed together and taken down as if I were drinking a milkshake or an egg cream in the candy store downstairs. Unlike all other medicines, this tasted fine. In fact, I made note of the ingredients so that I could put all that stuff together for myself secretly, even when I didn't have a cold. (more ...) |
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Third Prize - $50 A fascinating story of a New York banker who quits his job and
becomes financially involved with an impossible Russian, only to go to Moscow to find out
it's all just a scam. |
It all started because my wife isn't fond of breakfast. Isabel doesn't eat until noon or so, and has always called coffee downright repulsive. In the mornings, after she'd trotted off to work on her own energy, I'd head downtown for nourishment. I hated the upper east side neighborhood we lived in, so nearly every morning on my way to work in lower Manhattan, I sought solace in the form of eggs-over-easy in a small Ukrainian coffee shop in the East Village. It was a rarely departed from ritual, though Isabel never understood how a neighborhood could hold such influence. (more ...) |
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Third Prize - $50 A sarcastic and cynical view of a parasitic woman who feeds off self-help workshops.
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Thursday evening, again.
And so we each had trudged our way down those long hallowed hallways, to convene in the
innermost reaches of this church's lesser sanctimonial conference rooms; already we had
read aloud our inescapable list of rules -- the whole damn dozen -- to make official this
weekly event, and now we were sitting out the silence on a faded cluster of lump-stuffed
sofas and cram-padded chairs, twenty-or-so men and women somberly arranged in a circular
square on the thriftier props beneath us; and we were all being quiet as churchmice, if
hardly as fidgety, most of us attempting a calmer appearance ... |
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