Announcing our 2023-2024 Big Sky, Small Prose Winners:

WINNER: Julia LoFaso, “Water Healing”

Praise from guest judge Micah Fields:

"I want to tap my own spring," LoFaso asserts in the concluding lines of "Water Healing," a masterfully concise essay about bridges and the power of what lies beneath them. Like most great essays, LoFaso's brings the reader along in the process--however messy and winding it may be--of the writer's honest search for something (meaning, truth, memory, beauty, connection, et al.) As "Water Healing" insightfully toggles between the practice of hydropathy, the saga of the Brooklyn Bridge's construction, and the author's own draw to the water as a link between present and past selves, we are there to draw the invisible lines connecting stories, learning in real-time to construct the tension cables and calculate curves the way engineer John Roebling's wife Emily did when "water-curing" could not save his life. LoFaso's meditation on postpartum existence and the draw of water builds an intricate collage worth studying again and again.

Julia LoFaso is writing a hybrid collection about weird motherhood and various forms of solace seeking. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Wigleaf, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, and others. More of her writing is available at julialofaso.com.

RUNNER-UP: Elita Suratman, “Brown Paper Package”

Praise from guest judge Micah Fields:

In a brief yet moving recollection, "Brown Paper Package" explores the author's relationship with the culinary ephemera of Ramadan, a tradition the writer has "long transgressed since moving to the U.S." Each delicately rendered image in the essay forms the author's own "private cultural cache," a chorus of carefully wrapped pastries and Malay spices that conjure scents of a life once lived far away. To open the package each year is a kind of homecoming and aching nostalgia for the author, as bittersweet as the parcel's contents.

Elita Suratman emigrated from Singapore with dreams of following in her father’s footsteps as a writer. A master’s degree, family and a twenty-year marketing career later, she’s discovering her writing roots, working on a cross-continent memoir on her flyway toward self-identity. Excerpts can be found in Flights and Herstry. You can find more of her work here: http://elitasuratman.com/.

RUNNER-UP: Alan Sincic, “Fuse”

Praise from guest judge Micah Fields:

"Fuse" is a thrilling and crafty little sentence of an essay. It's a piece of art about art, which is to say it's about everything, and the writer handles the scope of this task with a deft hand. The work is playful and profound. Not only did I love reading it, but it reminded me why I love reading.

Alan's fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, The Greensboro Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Boulevard Online, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Recent stories won contests sponsored by Hunger Mountain, Prime Number, The Texas Observer, Orison, Meridian, Azure and others. You can visit him at alansincic.com.

**All three of these finalists will be published in issue 100 of CutBank, our winter/spring issue. Stay tuned in 2024 for details!**

Big Sky, Small Prose Contest: And the winners are...

February 27, 2018

BIG Congratulations to Allie Mariano, winner of this year's Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest, for her 1st place piece, "Water."

Here's what our judge, Zach VandeZande, had to say:

What drew me most to "Water" was its sense of wonder in the midst of tragedy. The best fiction offers us a way to make sense of the world, as in it creates for us the real on the story's own terms, and in doing so gives us a reason to hope. "Water," with its images and with its lyrical prose, does this effortlessly, and I'm grateful for the time I got to spend with it. I think you will be too.

Allie Mariano lives in New Orleans. Her writing has appeared in Saw Palm, Day One, and in New Orleans’ Times-Picayune. She is the nonfiction editor for Midway Journal. She is working on a novel, and she’s happy to be here.

Congrats also to our awesome runners up:

"A Posture of Grace" by Kim McCrea

"Holding His Fire" by Daryl Scroggins

We'll have more info soon, but we couldn't wait to shout out the news!