2018 Contest Results

Below you’ll find our 2018 Psychopomp Magazine Short Fiction Award winners and runners up, along with brief notes from our judge, Anne Valente, about the first, second, and third place stories. We look forward to sharing these stories in our issues later this year. Thank you to everyone who submitted to the 2018 contest. The prizes for the winning stories are $500, $150, and $100.

 

1st Place Winner: “Kingfisher Bridge” by Niamh MacCabe

“Narrated in gorgeously lush, precise prose of the natural world, ‘Kingfisher Bridge’ centers on a boy gone missing, the chaos of which is organized throughout the story by the Gaelic Alphabet Through Trees—one of the boy’s favorite charts. This piece pulls the reader in immediately, and is expertly and beautifully drawn.”

 

2nd Place Winner: “The Entryway” by Kira Frank

“A love story and a ghost story at once—truly, the best combination—’The Entryway’ is a compelling and propulsive short story. As a reader, I was drawn deeply into Michael’s family life and love life.”

 

3rd Place Winner: “If Not This” by Michelle Donahue

“Formally innovative and stylistically sharp, ‘If Not This’ pulled me in from the first paragraph. Told through the prism of an unreliable narrator, this story destabilizes the reader while also building fantastic, dynamic momentum.”

 

Runners Up

John Colburn: “The Story of Henry Ford”

Alyssa Proujansky: “A Place Beyond the Sun, Where It Is Cold Enough for All Things to Form” & “The Lines of the Space Between Us”

Sarah Scarr: “Mythic Splits”