The editors of Fairy Tale Review are pleased to announce the winners and finalists of our third annual contests in both prose and poetry. Each winner will receive $1,000 and publication in The Translucent Issue of Fairy Tale Review.
In the prose category, guest judge Kelly Link has selected “Animal Fires,” by Adam Soto. Of the winning story, Link writes:
What a pleasure to read so many stories spanning so many genres and approaches toward genre and the world at large. In the end, “Animal Fires” is the one that lingered longest with me. It captures the tender and elusive nature of family in spare and vivid sentences. I was surprised at every turn in this story as it unfolded, as one is surprised by the symmetry and strangeness of a shape in nature. Real life rendered as a kind of waking dream, in which texture and incident and events, shifts in point of view and time period, take on long shadows and complicated meaning.
Adam Soto currently resides in Austin, TX, where he is a contributing editor for American Short Fiction. His stories appear or are forthcoming in Glimmer Train, The Kenyon Review, fields, Front Porch Journal, and Versal Journal. In 2012, he was named the Michener Copernicus Society of America Writing Fellow as well as a finalist for the Narrative 30-Below Award. He has an MFA in Fiction from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently finishing a novel.
Link has selected “Family, Family,” by Jeannine Ouellette, and “Wolfbone,” by Olivia Olsen, as runners-up in prose.
For the poetry category, guest judge Traci Brimhall has selected “Call Me Moira, Call Me Angela” by Marie Marandola. Of the winning poem, Brimhall writes:
“Call Me Moira, Call Me Angela” has not left me since the first time I read it. The poem has so much of that fairy tale-like cadence and a sense of timelessness, but the details are so startlingly new in their strangeness. In our ever-changing and transient world, this poem felt like the fable of a speaker’s continual reinvention. It insists in its own transformation and seems to want to transform the reader as well. I felt wholly invited into its magic. Even if I was a little afraid of that magic, I was in awe, too. It is sharp and strong and clever down to its witchiest little finger.
Marie Marandola earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and now lives in San Diego, CA. She is currently at work on a poetry manuscript that utilizes the Peter Pan mythos to explore themes of stunted adulthood, motherhood, domesticity, and reclaiming agency: ripping the story away from Peter and giving it back to Wendy where it belongs.
Brimhall has selected “Hydra,” by Nazli Pearl, as the runner-up in poetry.
We would like to take a moment to congratulate the finalists in both prose and poetry, whose work impressed the editorial staff:
Prose
Thirii Myint, “Three Sons”
Adam Soto, “Six Beginnings for the End of the World”
Patricia Miranda, “The Ghost in the Forest”
Elizabeth Turner, “Smalldom” & “Horsemouth and Aquariumhead”
Rajesh Reddy, “The River”
Diana Xin, “Vladimir”
Rachel Zavecz, “#Belial”
Poetry
Allison Adair, “The Clearing: A Fable”
Alexandra Barylski, “Mystery and Magic of St. Peter”
Emily Cole, “In the Year of the Divorce, My Fascinations Include: Blindness, the Dust Bowl, and The Wizard of Oz”
Paul Cunningham, “Now You Can Use What You Picked Up Inside Yourself”
Jennifer Givhan, “The Dying Girl & The Date Palm”
Lucien Darjeun Meadows, “Self-Portrait as Telemachos”
Billie Tadros, “Myth of the phlegmatic temperament, or, the hack with it” & “Myth of the melancholic temperament, or, the anti-body”
Shelley Wong, “Winter Pineapple with Sea”
We would like to thank all those who submitted. We are continuously honored by the incredible display of interest in contemporary fairy tales.
As with previous years, we are donating 10 percent of the contest proceeds to a Tucson, Arizona-based organization that aims to improve the quality of life of local residents and provide them with greater opportunities. For the second year in a row, we are donating to the Primavera Foundation, as we think their mission is critical to the livelihoods of southern Arizona’s most vulnerable youths, in particular. The Primavera Foundation was founded in 1983 with the mission of providing the community with opportunities to reduce poverty through affordable housing, workforce development, and neighborhood revitalization. Every year, the Primavera Foundation’s work affects the lives of more than 5,000 individuals and families in southern Arizona. Learn more about the organization at www.primavera.org.
Next year’s award judges will be announced soon.
