2014 NONFICTION WINNERS

Erica Sklar's "Legacy" from The Summerset Review

For me, being an American Jew has always meant occasional conversations about avoiding Germany or not buying German products. Typically, in my family, these conversations were begun and carried out by foreign in-laws or people my grandparents' age. We'd sit on a plush couch, CNN on in the background, and someone would say something about Lebanon, and someone else would compare Arab extremists to Germans, and someone else would mutter, "fucking Nazis."

Michael Soloway's "Share the Chameleon" from Split Lit Magazine

My mom shows me her new tits then asks me to draw a tattoo on her shoulder before dinner.

Johanna Stoberock, with James Bigbee Garver's "Will Help Be Given?" from Better: Culture and Lit

I live in a rural area; Walla Walla is the largest town for sixty miles. It's a wheat town mostly, though the wine industry has become a bigger and bigger part of the town's economy over the past twenty years. There's a prison here too, not even two miles from Main Street, the largest and oldest penitentiary in the state.

Nicole Walker's "Five Micro-Essays" from The Account

At Fry's Grocery and Drugstore, the plastic bags are tinted brown. Thin enough to see through, they should be strong enough to hold at least three items. But the clerks at Fry's dig their hands into the abundance of bags and love them for their singularity.

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