Editors' Note ~
Powerful Stories Found at the End of the 'Journeys' Contest
We are delighted to announce the results of our Second Annual Winter Solstice Writing Competition, and want to thank our guest judge, the incredible Tamara Kaye Sellman, for performing the nearly impossible task of choosing the winners.
"This was harder than it seemed, because every time I did a reread of everything, I came up with different choices and for different reasons," Tamara wrote in the note accompanying her choices. "Ultimately, I boiled it all down to the quality of the story told and its ability to illuminate your readership in some way."
We gave Tamara, herself the editor of two highly acclaimed literary journals, Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism and Periphery Online, the task of choosing a single winner from the anonymous entries we sent her in each of three categories. Here are the stories she chose, along with some of her comments on each:
Flash Fiction
Winner: "Coyote" by Mary Estrada
"This was the easiest of all the categories, I found," Sellman wrote. "While I found all the stories to be fairly strong when it came to craft and stylistics, I think "Coyote" had the strongest narrative, and the imagery stayed with me long after I'd put the story down."
Short Story
Winner: "Quantum Fool" by Tantra Bensko
"This was the hardest of all the categories. I found the use of the second person present tense in this story ["Quantum Fool"] pretty effective. It's a hard thing to do, but I was able, as the reader, to absorb and "live" the narrative as it happened. The images were quite beautiful.
Creative Nonfiction
Winner: "Immersion" by Robert Brandon Henderson
Honorable Mention: "On Beauty" by Devon Ward-Thommes
"I really enjoyed reading this category," Tamara told us. After choosing the winning entry, she also nominated a second piece for honorable mention.
Of the winning entry, "Immersion," she wrote, "There is a gorgeous and profound simplicity to this piece that haunted me every time I read it. Sure, it's a short piece, but I kept asking myself, 'What more is needed?' And the answer was 'nothing.' This is all we need to understand the author's experience with baptizing a terminally ill patient before they move on to the next world. I appreciated that the piece wasn't sentimental, but highly respectful of the time, the place, the past, the present, and the main subject, all by the author's choice in being unflinchingly honest."
Of the honorable mention story, "On Beauty," she wrote, "This essay created a wonderful fold of experiences, thoughts, settings, and details. I really enjoyed its transcendant quality."
We were thrilled that Tamara agreed to be the final judge for this year's competition. In addition to editing the two literary magazines, she directs MRCentral.net, a global interactive community which focuses on literary magical realism. As a supporter of writing communities, she helped found the Jane's Stories Press Foundation in 1998 and now regularly volunteers for the Richard Hugo House, Seattle's premiere writer's community, and the Field's End Writers' Community, where she serves as conference director.
Sellman is also an award-winning short-story writer; her work has appeared internationally and has been anthologized widely. She works as an independent editor specializing in speculative fiction for Writer's Rainbow Literary Services, LLC, where she can also be found teaching creative writing workshops and coaching writers through specific projects. She is currently at work on a novel, a short-story collection, and a book on the writing craft.
We also want to extend our deep gratitude to all the writers who participated in the Winter Solstice 2008 "Journeys" Contest. It was an absolute pleasure to read all the entries, and extremely hard to select the ones to publish.
Copyright 2008 by Cezanne’s Carrot
