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by Gina Ochsner First Prize - $1000 A whimisical coming-of-age story about a lost soul in the wide-open midwest who, instead of staying in grad school, takes a job defending billboards from the diabolical forces intent on destroying them. |
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by Jimmy Carl Harris Second Prize - $300 A funny but truly honest story of a man who comes to grips with his
diminishing powers, and must revise his expectations from life. |
 It’s going to be a double
Irish morning. Eloise comes on-stage wearing her favorite chiffon, the one she declares
would photograph well in black and white. She seines around our living room, dragging her
net through the detritus of two lives, ensnaring the flotsam and jetsam of fifty-some-odd
years -- an enameled box half-full of pebbles from the old home place, a tiny bust of our
first Irish Catholic president, a pink glass clock ten years in need of a battery. She
considers them, each in their turn, seeking signs from her muse, I guess, then returns
them to their appointed places when they disappoint her. She collapses across the daybed
-- she insists on calling it a divan, another of her ways of putting on airs -- flutters
her fingertips at me, and sighs a response to my observation that the fucking network has
moved the Notre Dame game to a later time. "Must you always be vulgar, Casey?
It’s so common."(more ...) |
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The Villa, the Famous Feminist, and Me by Candida Lawrence Third Prize - $50 The sarcastic musings and incredibly realistic tribulations of a
women who experiences the true nature a feminist celebrity. |
 Jack and I call it "the villa" in order to mock
the obscene cost-over-run and our own foolishness in deciding to buy land and build a
house for grandchildren who don't as yet exist, for unmarried children in their late
twenties who are not fond of each other. The continuing debt to the bank ($5,000 per
month) is like a terminal case of poison oak for Jack who has a credit believability,
which I do not.I live in a studio some two hundred feet up the hill from the villa. This studio is the most gorgeous in the county -- high ceilings, windows with wide views to the Pacific Ocean, my writing table with typewriter beneath a window which looks out on a deck with birdbath and friendly raccoons, rabbits, sparrows, and the constant flash of the hummingbird's iridescent green and crimson. I can sit on the toilet and gaze out over the valley. (more ...) |
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by Mary Hazzard Third Prize - $50 A careless, self-centered man finally learns the meaning and value
of his family and teenage son from, ironically, his mistress. |
"You didn't need to do it," Ambrose Peale says to his sixteen-year-old son. They are in his wife's little gray Honda, driving toward the island that isn't always an island, toward what he thinks of now as the crime scene. He wonders if his station wagon will be cordoned off with yellow tape--if it's even still there. "Do what?" Justin, blank-faced, reaches out and turns on the radio, full blast. When a Haydn symphony blares through the car, he reaches again to find something more raucous. "It was an accident, Dad," he shouts over the noise. "Didn't you ever hear of an accident?" (more ...) |
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by Michael Burns Third Prize - $50 A young white boy, lonely and from a poor family, confronts racism when he becomes friends with his black landlord and her daughter in 1950.
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June, 1950 Johnny Labalm spooned the last
of the cereal from his bowl. There was no fresh milk in the house. He had to mix canned
milk and water, and a half box of confectioner’s sugar, to keep himself from gagging
on the canned milk. He heard Charlotte Toney at the screen door before he saw her;
heard the rustle of her skirt, the clang of her bracelets. |
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by Marie Kazalia Third Prize - $50 A women immersed in another culture struggles to make sense of her surroundings.
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 Sharp tingling hot air burns the cheeks on my face.
I imagine my flesh turning bright red sitting pinned to the back seat by thick heavy
humidity. My arms glued to my sides by the outer pressure. My thighs, rear, lower back,
stuck to the smooth leather seat. Breathe with difficulty, chest heaving against the
invisible deeply stacked pressure, humidity, and hot scorching air. My black silk pants
and blouse blend into the shadowy car interior all dark in contrast to the bright white
outside, on the road, in the air. The glaring brightness washes the dusty road out pale of
detail. A slight breeze cools trickling in through the open car window. Glaring whiteness
pierces my dark glasses, painfully illuminating the deep contracting black holes in my
eyes. My pale face glows a white contrast. (more ...) |
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