Author: Drew Robertson

Announcing Winners and Finalists for the 2024 Editor’s Prizes

Posted on by Drew Robertson

We are so excited to the winners and finalists for our 2024 Editor’s Prizes in Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry! Winners receive publication and a thousand dollars each. Winning work will appear in THE FLORIDA REVIEW Vol. 48, No. 2, Spring 2025, on sale in January, 2025.

2024 Editor’s Award for Fiction

WINNER:
Sophia Shealy: “Paradise”

 

Sophia Shealy received her MFA in Fiction from Florida State University. Her work has been published in Peatsmoke Journal and Pangyrus, and she was named a finalist for the Sewanee Review’s fifth annual Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction contest. You can find her on Instagram: @sophiashealy

 

 

 

FINALISTS:
Shastri Akella: “It Started With Stone”
Taylor Brown: “Rise, River, Rise”
Dominique Fong: “Angels in the Park”
Joshua Levy: “Wedding Rice”
Kirk Wilson: “Subtraction”

 

2024 Editor’s Award for Creative Nonfiction

WINNER:
Sienna Zeilinger: “Sorry About the Raccoons”

Sienna Zeilinger lives in Philadelphia and is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. Her writing has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, CutBank, Real Life, Passages North, and elsewhere. Sienna’s work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Ohioana Library Association. She is an editor at Alien Magazine and Autofocus and a recent graduate of the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden. You can find her at siennazwrites.com. You can also find her on Instagram @siennazzz and 
Twitter @siennazeilinger 

 

 

FINALISTS:
Cory Brown: “Out in the Deep”
Asha Dore: “Florida Guns”
M.E. Macuaga: “Wild Blossoms”
Shane Neilson: “Chasing Goffman”

 

2024 Editor’s Award for Poetry

WINNER:
A. E. Wynter: “Inflatable Boys”

A. E. Wynter is a Black writer from New York. She currently lives in Saint Paul, MN, where she has curated multimedia art exhibits, readings, open mics, and online writing workshops, among other community events. Wynter has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and was a fiction fellow in the 2021-2022 Loft Mentor Series. Her in-progress novel Far Cry From A Woman was a finalist in the 2021 Miami Fellowship for Emerging Writers, and she received first place in the 53rd New Millennium Award for Poetry. Other poems have appeared in West Trade Review and Water~Stone Review. Wynter was a 2023 resident at the Carolyn Moore Writers Residency. You can find her on Instagram@ashwritesprose 

 

 

 

FINALISTS:
Leia Bradley: “Baby Blues”
Kristen Renee Miller: “Fear Not, For Your Names Are Written in the Eternal Scroll”
Merlin Ural Rivera: “Angelus Novus”

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Introducing Creative Nonfiction Editor Brendan Stephens

Posted on by Drew Robertson

We are thrilled to introduce Brendan Stephens as our new online Creative Nonfiction editor for Aquifer!

Brendan Stephens is a writer and educator from Appalachia. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Pinch, Epoch, the Southeast Review, Cleaver Magazine, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His awards include multiple Inprint Donald Barthelme awards, an Into the Void Fiction Prize, a Sequestrum Emerging Writer Award, and inclusion in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions. He earned his Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston and an MFA from the University of Central Florida. Currently, he is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern Oklahoma State University and a submissions editor for SmokeLong Quarterly.

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2023-2024 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award Winner!

Posted on by Drew Robertson

We are thrilled to announce that Kate Osana Simonian is our 2023-2024 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award Winner! Her chapbook, The Screw, will be published and available to purchase in March 2025. 

Kate Osana Simonian is an Armenian-Australian writer, and she’s currently an assistant professor at California State University, San Bernardino. Her work has been published in the Pushcart Anthology, Chicago Tribune, Iowa Review, and Best Australian Stories, and she’s received various accolades including the Nelson Algren Award, a John Steinbeck Fellowship, and a California Arts Council Emerging Writer Grant. Kate lives with her partner and two delightful cats, who are helping her to finish her first novel, Singleton. Ask her about it! Or check her out at katesimonian.com.

About The Screw, from judge Mark Polanzak:

The Screw is a super tight, dazzling novella about a young woman lured into an abusive relationship with a common monster of a boyfriend. The protagonist—a second-person “You”—seems to be following instructions from an internal authority that dictates how to succeed at failure. But this real-life horror story of insidious psychological abuse is told with stunning wit and innovation. This novella evokes Ann Beattie and Ottessa Moshfegh, but the writing has a velocity all its own.

The Screw is a page-turner for its sentences as much as its storyline. Because of the whip-smart humor and consistently fresh way this tale is spun, I felt a rare joyful discomfort while reading about the creeping control the abuser takes from our protagonist. The Screw manages to do what fiction should: submerge the reader in an experience rather than tell them about one.

 

About the judge for the 2023-2024 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award, Mark Polanzak:

Mark Polanzak is the author of the hybrid work POP! (Stillhouse) and the story collection, The OK End of Funny Town (BOA Editions), which won the BOA Short Fiction Prize. His short stories and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, The American Scholar, DIAGRAM, and anthologized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. Mark co-founded the literary magazine, draft: the journal of process, and co-produced the podcast, The Fail Safe. A graduate of the University of Arizona’s MFA Program in Fiction, Mark teaches creative writing, literature, and podcasting at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He lives in Rhode Island.

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2023-2024 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award Finalists

Posted on by Drew Robertson

We are so excited to announce the finalists for our 2023-2024 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award!

Mary Kate Coleman, “Wednesday Trash Day”

Will Musgrove, “After Last Call”

Kate Osana Simonian, “The Screw”

Each year, The Florida Review honors former editor Jeanne Leiby with the publication of a prose or graphic narrative chapbook. To purchase one of our previous winners’ chapbooks, please see our Store, and for more information about Jeanne Leiby, the award in her honor, and previous chapbook winners and finalists, please see our Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Series page.

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