CONGRATULATIONS
to our 2024 Winner, Runner-Up & People’s Choice!
Our 2024 judge, Kyo Maclear, had this to say about the winning and runner-up stories:
ANNA RUMIN - Babushka Had Pluck
Judge’s citation: A paean to a plucky ‘babushka’ narrated by a grandchild who situates her own family story within the story of an immigrant generation. This sparkling tale is a medley of personal and public history, memory and enhancement, sweetness and sorrow. It sings with that lovely thing— a soulful and specific voice: devoted, witty, sometimes confabulating, always observant. The writer does not overstate or over-indicate what needs to be heeded, just pulls us along with a loving cadence and leaning lilt that builds meaning and impact through tone as much as text. We are left with a sense of grandparent-grandchild love that is gloriously nonchalant and irreplaceably multi-note.
JANE USHER - My Mother Wore a Pink Coat
Judge’s citation: Beginning with a scene of un-ordinary lilacs, this delicate story captures a young child’s scrambled sense of the world amid a sudden family tragedy. With their use of off-key imagery and sonic unease, the writer captures a threshold moment where knowledge is still sensory more than factual. This is the realm of ‘proto-story’. When the child’s incomplete perception is finally filled in, it is devastating. But as readers, we experience the consoling company of a highly-attuned and compassionate narrator——who will (as we know) become an eloquent future writer.
JENNIE MCBRIDE - A Normal Life
Of the creation of her popular story, Jennie writes: “"Mom was always the center of attention in our family. She was highly intelligent, multi-talented, dramatic, and -- aided by the age of Mother’s Little Helper -- a victim of substance and alcohol abuse. A Normal Life is one of my attempts to process the magic and the tragic, trying to uncover the person who was hiding underneath all the drama. It has been an interesting and often painful excavation that has turned up new feelings of compassion and forgiveness for my mother. And, rather surprisingly, for myself."