We are excited to announce the winners of the 2020 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest, judged by Daryl Scroggins. We appreciate every submission we get, so thank you. The winning stories will be published in CutBank 94.
First-Place Prize:
"Tickling the Dragon's Tail" by John Blair
What the judge had to say: "This is a brilliant work, perfectly orchestrated in its language and themes. I thank you for making it a finalist and giving me the chance to help in pressing it forward."
John Blair has published six books, most recently Playful Song Called Beautiful (University of Iowa Press, 2016) as well as poems & stories in The Colorado Review, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, The Antioch Review, New Letters, and elsewhere. His seventh book, the poetry collection The Art of Forgetting, is forthcoming this December from Measure Press
Runner-up:
"Like Baked Alaska" by Francesca Leader
Judge says: "I admire the tumultuous pace of this story--the headlong dive into a final celebration at the end of a life. Old dangers are present, but for a moment they are held at bay."
Francesca Leader witnessed the eruptions of Mount Saint Helens in 1980 and Mount Usu in 2000. She is a self-taught artist and writer and Montana expat living in Northern Virginia, where there are no active volcanoes. You can find her on Instagram @moon.in.a.bucket and Facebook: francesca.hastorun.
Runner-up:
"Late Summer" by Elisabeth Adwin Edwards
Judge says: "The quiet understatement of this account of a remembered life draws me in quickly. And the symmetries that develop, between memory and present circumstance, old gardens and new growth, come together in an unsentimental communion with an important figure in the speaker's past."
Elisabeth Adwin Edwards’s poems have appeared in A-Minor Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, River Heron, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Twitter: @EAdwinEdwards
Finalists:
Steve Fox
Alan Sincic
Caitlin McGill
Alice Hatcher
Ben Roth
Marilee Dahlman
Steven Crowell
Daryl Scroggins has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. His fictions, poems, and creative non-fictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies around the country and abroad, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Blink-Ink, Carolina Quarterly, CutBank, Dime Show Review, Egress, Fiction Southeast, Green Mountains Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, KYSO Flash, New Flash Fiction Review, New York Tyrant, Northwest Review, Quick Fiction, and The Portland Review. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize several times, his flash fiction and prose poems have also won a number of contests and awards. He is the author of several poetry and fiction chapbooks, as well as Winter Investments, a collection of stories (Trilobite Press), and This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press). One of his microfictions was reprinted in Flash Fiction International (2015; in the Flash Theory section), and another microfiction has been included in Best Microfiction 2020.
Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to our judge, Daryl Scroggins! Look for these stories in print in our forthcoming issue of CutBank 94.
The 2021 Big Sky, Small Prose Contest is open for Submissions from August 16 - September 30