After much deliberation, our judges have announced the winners of CutBank’s 2021 genre contest! Winning pieces will be featured in the forthcoming issue of CutBank 95, due out this summer. Thank you to everyone who submitted. It is always an honor to read your work.
Finalists:
Carey Olney
Anne Kilfoyle
Stephanie Early Green
Paul Riker
2021 Montana Prize in Fiction, judged by Emily Ruskovich
Winner: “Of All the Fires that Ever Burned” by Stephen Brophy
Emily Ruskovich had this to say about the story:
“I loved this story for its twists and turns and also for its heart. Though the story ends with violence and death, what lingers most for me is kindness. Such unlikely kindness, such humanity. This man, who has fought poverty and prejudice his whole life, this man who has had to lie and to steal in order to endure, finds truth in the fires of the past, just before his death. This tragic story stirred me deeply. I was very moved.”
Stephen Brophy's short fiction has appeared on Bandit Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Shotgun Honey, among others. He is currently working on a collection of linked short stories. He lives in Cork, Ireland with his fiancée and two sons. You can find him on Twitter at @sbrophy85.
Emily Ruskovich is the author of the novel IDAHO (Random House, 2017). In 2019, she became the fourth American to win the International Dublin Literary Award. She received her B.A. from the University of Montana, her M.A. from the University of New Brunswick, and her M.F.A from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Zoetrope, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her short story "Owl" won a 2015 O. Henry Award. She currently teaches fiction in the M.F.A. program at Boise State University, but will be joining the faculty at the University of Montana in Fall of 2021. She and her husband have two small daughters.
2021 Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, judged by Peter Godwin
Winner: “Father as Natural Disaster” by Lena Crown
Peter Godwin had this to say about the story:
“A beautifully rendered remembrance of an incendiary father, seen through the prism of the California wildfires that provided his living as a public loss adjuster, described in the ‘vocabulary of combustion.’”
Lena Crown is a writer from Oakland, California. Her work is published or forthcoming in Sonora Review, The Offing, Entropy, Hobart, and JMWW, among others. She is currently stationed outside Washington, D.C., pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at George Mason University. Find her on Twitter at @which_is_to_say.
Finalists:
Amy Gordon
Richard Prins
Will Howard
Peter Godwin was born and raised in Zimbabwe. He studied law at Cambridge University and international relations at Oxford. He has taught writing at Princeton and the New School, and currently teaches at Columbia. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent, documentary-maker, screenwriter, and a former president of PEN America. He is the author of six non-fiction books, including: Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa (with photos by Chris Johns and foreword by Nelson Mandela), Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, which won the Borders Original Voices Award, and The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, which was selected by the New Yorker as a best book of the year.
Finalists:
Rebecca Carson
Cindy Juyoung Ok
Mervyn Seivwright
Haley Winans
2021 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, judged by William Jolliff
Winner: “How to Behead a Snake” by Ben Kline
William Jolliff had this to say about the poem:
“How to Behead a Snake” achieves lasting power through its masterful use of sensual particularity, keen detailing of an unsettling narrative, and painful suggestion of otherness. The final stanza offers a non-predictable turn from cruel high school antics to a personal history of deeply felt isolation. This poem is hard to read—and harder yet to forget.”
Ben Kline (he/him) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of Sagittarius A* (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) and Dead Uncles (Driftwood Press, 2021.) His work appeared in Thrush, Indianapolis Review, DIAGRAM, Hobart, The Cortland Review, A&U Magazine and elsewhere. He tweets @BenKlinePoet.
William Jolliff has published several hundred poems in academic journals, literary reviews, and anthologies, along with many critical articles and reviews. He has also served for many years as a contributing poetry editor for The Windhover. His most recent books are a poetry collection, Twisted Shapes of Light (Cascade Press-Poiema Poetry Series, 2016), and a critical monograph, Heeding the Call: A Study of Denise Giardina’s Novels (West Virginia University Press, 2020). In 2014 his work was included in poet laureate Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. In addition to writing poetry and criticism, Bill is a musician, a student of Appalachian culture, and a songwriter in the folk tradition. His original compositions and reworkings of traditional material have been recorded by several artists, among them Tracy Grammer, whose recording of Bill’s “Laughlin Boy” was the most played song on the most played album on folk stations in 2005. A practicing Quaker, Bill currently serves as professor of English at George Fox University in Oregon.
The 2022 Montana Prizes in Creative Nonfiction and Fiction, as well as the Patricia Goedicke Poetry Prize, open on November 9, 2021. Stay tuned for an announcement about the upcoming year’s judges.