We are excited to announce the winners of the 2019 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest, judged by Melinda Moustakis. We appreciate every submission we get, so thank you. The winning stories will be published in CutBank 92.
——
First-Place Prize:
“what we hold in our belly” by J.J. Peña
JJ Peña is a queer, burrito-blooded writer, living & existing in El Paso, Tx. His work appears in, or is forthcoming from, Passages North, Split Lip, Into the Void, Hayden’s Ferry, & elsewhere. He has an MFA from the University of Texas at El Paso. @heckaseuss
——
Runners-up:
“My Sister and Other Big Things” by Darcy Casey
“Our Little Tradition” by Stephen Hundley
Darcy Casey is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program. Her work has appeared in the 34th Parallel, River River, and elsewhere. She is working on her second novel and teaches writing workshops in Maine. @DarcyLeeCasey
Stephen Hundley is a former high school science teacher from Savannah, Georgia. His work has appeared in Notre Dame Review, Carve, Permafrost, and other journals. He serves as a fiction editor for The Swamp and Driftwood Press and is a Richard Ford Fellow at the University of Mississippi. Instagram at: smhundley
Finalists:
Mariya Poe
Elizabeth Chesla
Joyce Dehli
Margie Sarsfield
Sammy Salem
Rachel Laverdiere
Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska and grew up in California. She is the author of Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Maurice Prize, and was a 5 Under 35 selection by the National Book Foundation. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Granta, Kenyon Review, New England Review and elsewhere. Her story “They Find the Drowned” won an O. Henry Prize. She is the recipient of the Hodder Fellowship from The Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University, the NEA Literature Fellowship in Fiction, the Kenyon Review Fellowship at Kenyon College, the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington Fellowship at George Washington University, and the Rona Jaffe Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. We’re honored to have her as our guest judge for this contest.
Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to our judge, Melinda Moustakis! Look for these stories in print in our forthcoming issue of CutBank 92.
——
The 2020 Big Sky, Small Prose Contest is open for Submissions from August 16 - September 30