No Land Is My Land | Hayley Igarashi Thomas
NMW Winner | America, One Year from Now Writing Contest
Hayley Igarashi Thomas of New Market, Maryland for “No Land Is My Land”
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fiction
It Goes Both Ways | Kate Simonian
57th NMW Award for Fiction.
Kate Simonian of San Bernardino for “It Goes Both Ways”
Smack dab into a marriage gone sideways, a naked stranger appears one night…and his nudity may be the least strange thing about him. Is he a time traveler? A folie à deux? Or the last hope for a couple to find their way back to each other?
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Saved | Rebecca Godwin
56th NMW Award for Fiction. Rebecca Godwin for “Saved”
TThere’s something mesmerizing about a heroine on the verge of discovering her own power… however unexpected the reveal.
Godwin’s story, “Saved,” delivers that pleasure in spades, and lots more besides, reminding us that salvation is surely in the eye of the beholder.
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The Curse of Calloused Feet | Gretta Trafficante
56th NMW Award for Flash Fiction. Gretta Trafficante for “The Curse of Calloused Feet”
A beautifully strange meditation on curses, on the fates thrust upon us, and the identities we shape for ourselves.
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Baptism by Earth | Mekiya Outini
55th NMW Award for Poetry.
Mekiya Outini of Kansas City, Missouri for “Baptism by Earth”
At heart a love story, Outini’s brilliant work explores identity, rebirth, environmental collapse and metamorphosis, and indeed the very notion of what it means to be “a human thing.”
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Molten | Jacob Orlando
55th NMW Award for Flash Fiction. Jacob Orlando for “Molten”
The unique setting of each vignette in Orlando’s “Molten” underscores a collective truth of our times. There is a fire burning through this land, flames licking at every place people turn to for comfort, solace, joy. Some will be consumed, but all will be forged by the terrible heat.
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Ghost Story | Carrie Grinstead
54th NMW Award for Fiction. Carrie Grinstead of Los Angeles, California for “Ghost Story”
Which is scarier…the ghost in your backyard or the ones in your heart? Grinstead’s haunting tale has both, and plenty else to terrify. “Ghost Story” will hold you in its grip long after you’ve finished reading.
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Persephone | Amina Gautier
54th NMW Award for Flash Fiction. Amina Gautier of Chicago, Illinois for “Persephone”
Gautier’s story digs in sharp and deep, rooting through mythological narrative to explore the dual natures of light and dark, and the transformational powers awaiting those brave enough to unearth them.
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Baptism | Ellen Pauley Goff
53rd NMW Award for Fiction.
It’s easy to forget there are places small and remote enough to have escaped the inexorable pull of “progress”… places that still bow to laws and customs all their own. Easy, too, to underestimate just how strong the clutches of those places can be.
Part ode to, part interrogation of the Southern Gothic genre, Goff’s story is here to remind us that though we may be done with the past, the past is seldom done with us.
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