2017 FICTION WINNERS

Jennifer Lynn Christie’s “Alien Love” from Atticus Review

"It is impossible to process happiness when it's real. It's just you going through every little thing, stunned. You drop stuff, you spill it; you clean it up—everything is something, and there's so much of everything. You notice it, and you count it, whatever and wherever it is. At home Dad asks what's so funny and I realize I'm laughing, out loud, at not nothing, but everything, because there is only everything now. This is love, this is my love, this is what it's doing to me here and now."

Allegra Hyde’s “Endangered” from American Short Fiction

"The artists were kept in cages. This was for their own good. The world had gotten really ugly, really fast, and the artists, generally, did not have the skills to survive."

Daisy Johnson’s “A Bruise the Size and Shape of a Door Handle” from American Short Fiction

"The house did not love the way a dog would love, unthinking, beating back up after a cuff to the nose; or the way a child did, through lack of choice and necessity. It loved her darkly and greatly and with a huge, gut-swallowing want that killed the hive of wasps that were building hard in the wall and cut the electricity for odd, silent hours: Salma's father humming tunelessly in the attic, torch in hand, fiddling with the fuse box."

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