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Recent
Contest Winners
SPRING 2005 FICTION
CONTEST WINNERS
Judge: Elizabeth Stuckey-French
FIRST PLACE
Shivani Manghnani, "The Flood"
“'The Flood' is a moving, compelling
story—the most fully realized of all the entries. I love the way
the author created a number of very specific characters with just a few
sure brush strokes. The mother, Lina, the French couple, Mooney, and even
the father are unique and alive—they jump right off the page. The
description of the flood and its destruction of the house was vivid and
suspenseful. I like the way the flood was used to show us how the mother
is going to deal with things in her life from now on—she’s
gotten stronger and bolder. We see this in the way she confronts Mooney
and in her strength and determination to protect the house and her daughters.
But we also know that she’s going to have a hell of a fight on her
hands." Elizabeth Stuckey-French
RUNNER-UP
Susan Land, "Amenities"
“'Amenities' has a snappish, energetic, unapologetic
voice that drew me right in. In this story, I loved the way the main character
kept thinking and confessing (to the reader) horrible things she’s
done, and then constantly lying to the people around her. The last scene
between the mother and daughter felt very believable. The fact that the
narrator tells the biggest lie at the end in order to stay close to her
daughter is heartbreaking. Margaret’s cancer and Ava’s request
for the pill are handled in an off-hand, unsentimental way that only makes
the story sadder." Elizabeth Stuckey-French
RUNNER-UP
Kristie Smeltzer, "Hurricane Shoes"
"The dialogue in 'Hurricane Shoes' is devastatingly funny. It illustrates
so well the prickly relationship between mother and daughter. I enjoyed
the narrator’s world-weary, impatient attitude toward her mother
and Joseph. The mother and Joseph are types and, at the same time, well-drawn
individuals. And in this story, too, the cancer and pregnancy are understated
and serve to create more confusion, humor, and finally a wary closeness
between the mother and daughter." Elizabeth Stuckey-French
FALL 2004 POETRY
CONTEST WINNERS
Judge: Lisa Russ Spaar
FIRST PLACE
Elizabeth Kerlikowske, "The Word"
"I like
this poem’s willingness to flirt with the cliché of the Crayola
coloring box, heaping its accruals of fresh, newly minted figures of speech
incrementally, and building as it moves a strident, irresistible case
for the intrepid, essential inventiveness of language. With imperative
conviction, the poet insists on the inextricable connection between sensory
experience ('Create a word for the color / of white tail deer in summer
/ not something from a crayon box / / but a brand new word that / sounds
antique, that implies / both sleek muscularity and big eyed / / trust,
has the bark of forest / in it and cold rush of stream, / plural and singular
because deer / rarely move alone . . .') and our need to articulate our
meditations on that experience—mysterious, incorporeal—into
language that is discrete, original, embodied. Painterly, literary,
lyrical, pop culturally savvy, this poem is unafraid to embrace the word: historically,
personally, ekphrastically, essentially. 'Later there are tears,' the
poet writes, 'when they color, impossible / for crayons to get the burnish
/ of deer right without the word.'” Lisa Russ Spaar
SECOND
PLACE
Whitney Beers, "It's lying"
"The poem interrogates directly the
currency of the lost and the unlost—the tension between emotional
and linguistic impoverishment, and the consequences on an ardent spirit
in a context of withholding. Conflating the experience of finding
a broken crab house on the seashore with memories of her own meager, needdriven
childhood, the poet plunders the word 'lying'—embracing
its passivity, its helplessness, its deceit—and in doing so confronts
a legacy of damaging want and hoarding ('I need my mother turning
/ out the pockets of jeans, scavenging // forgotten change, frayed denim
legs / dangling from the washer’s mouth. We can get by. Need
is a // sin word. Charity, she says, is for Jesus / not this house. She
palms the coins. // She doesn’t know I’m lying / at the door
crack, watching.'). With contrapuntal clarity, this poem acknowledges
the implacability of certain hungers, particularly the longing for truth
and abundance, for security, for home: 'I need to see this treasure
/ chest bursting into pieces, splitting. I need / / to lift the empty
houses, hear the ocean and know it as counterfeit. See the flow of
broken // shells, sun-scarred, sand in the grooves. Our tongues / bitten
and scraped. Dark stones rubbed smooth and raw.'” Lisa Russ Spaar
THIRD PLACE
Carol Munn, "Crossing the Yard"
"With cinematic
clarity, elision, and repetition, this poem confronts a moment of psychic
confusion and crisis, portraying with tenderness and empathy the tensile
community that can transpire between unlikely neighbors thrown together
by the felicities of place, time, and emergency. A woman in the throes
of a psychotic break finds unexpected refuge and solace when disturbing
inner voices drive her to a neighboring apartment: 'Paz crossed the yard
to face her fear, / found schoolteachers in pajamas / drinking coffee
on the reclining sofa // Where are the men, she asked, my husband / knows
about my lovers here, the police / will come to take me away for adultery
// Who lives here, she asked—/ It’s us Paz, who help you /
wheel your trash can / to the concrete landing on Mondays / Just the two
of us here, reading the paper / do you want some coffee, we asked, //
are you in danger? . . .' The borders crossed and uncrossable in this
poem are linguistic, psychological, haunting. 'Paz bothers me still,'
the speaker says, 'her voice / in my head asking for answers / I don’t
have in language I don’t know.' I admire this poem’s
willingness to dramatize this unknowing with illuminating, unjudgmental
compassion."
Lisa Russ Spaar
SPRING 2004 FICTION
CONTEST WINNERS
Judge: Jesse Lee Kercheval
FIRST
PLACE
Yelizaveta Renfro, "A Letter To My Sister (That I Will Never
Send)"
"'A Letter to My Sister (That I Will Never
Send)' is a perfect meditation on the conflict between truth and memory.
One sister recalls the day she injured her younger sibling with such vivid
recall, such recreation of the events, it is as if the reader were there
when the childhood game turns, casually, nearly accidentally, into violence."
Jesse Lee Kercheval
SECOND
PLACE
Art Taylor, "Advanced Formulas"
"'Advanced Formulas' uses the everyday
commonplace of a mother's giving her children vitamins to open up a world
of daily losses as one after another the narrator's aunts and uncles and
then the mother herself succumb to Alzheimer's. Touching and real, this
story speaks volumes in its short length." Jesse Lee Kercheval
THIRD
PLACE
Kristine Somerville, "A Berlin Cafe"
"'A Berlin Cafe' is a wonderful example
of one of my favorite genres - the one page short story story. In one
page that revolves around an encounter that happens off scene, the author
evokes the whole life of the narrator in nearly novelistic scope."
Jesse Lee Kercheval
FALL 2003 POETRY
CONTEST WINNERS
Judge: Marlys West
FIRST PLACE
Mary Ann Wehler, "At 69, Still the Birthing Dream"
"I'm impressed
with the suspense and voice in the poem. The multiple possibilties for
every rendition of the dream are so clearly drawn and sometimes startling
in contrast. 'I'm in a car, an apartment, a flat, I'm alone or with someone.'
This seems so disjointed but beautifully so. It acts as a chorus. The
language is very simple, almost pointedly so. It makes for a very compelling
litany of disassociation." Marlys West
SECOND PLACE
Lisa Ampleman, "Hagar and Ishmael at the Motel 6"
"I love the camera work in the middle
of the poem especially. It splits the experience into reading the poem
and becoming some kind of witness or audience to the setting. This is
an interesting shift in the narrative. Visually the poem makes interesting
use of spaces, and I have to say that I really like the word neckbones,
the hand as altered star, and the 'hair snared by sleep.' I'm so taken
with the gold encroaching upon her toes. I keep coming back to that."
Marlys West
THIRD PLACE
Matthew Frank, "Mountains"
"I particularly like how the carefully
bound story of the couple's evening is created with concise bits of dialogue,
motion, and wonderful domestic details: the sheets barely blue, heads
propped on three pillows each. This is very good. I think the description
of the woman poet is quite funny, and the description of the nightgown
falling away as hair is beautiful. There is nice wit in the poem: 'Something
had something to do with their smallness' is funny. Very dry wit and very
smart observations." Marlys West 
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[Annual Poetry & Fiction Contests Details]
Each year So to Speak offers [Fiction and Poetry Contests]. Past judges
have included Linda McCarriston, Susan Vreeland, Judy Grahn, and Lyn Lifshin.
The prize for first place winners is $500 in addition to publication in
the journal. The two runners-up are also published in the journal. All
contest entrants receive a free issue of the journal, and winners receive
two free copies.
To
be considered
for our annual
contest, entrants
should send their
manuscript along
with a ten dollar
entry fee via
check or money
order made out
to George Mason
University. PLEASE
DO NOT SEND CASH.
The entry fees
are what make
this contest
possible. Entrants
should send duplicates
of their work,
one with entrant
name and contact
information
and one without,
as the selection
process is conducted
through blind
judging. Please
send a cover
letter stating
that your work
is a contest
entry, a brief
bio, and a SASE
(self addressed
stamped envelope).
2008 ANNUAL FICTION CONTEST:
5,000 word maximum. Manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, and pages
numbered. To submit more than one short story, additional $15 entry fee
required per story. Deadline: Postmarked by March 1, 2008. [Judge: TBA]
2007 ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST: Please send 3-5
typed poems. Deadline: Postmarked by October 1, 2007. Marie Howe
MAIL TO :
So to Speak, (Poetry or Fiction Contest)
George Mason University
4400 University Drive, MSN 2C5
Fairfax, VA 22030
Advice: Sending you
entry in early can never hurt your chances as it allows editors to sit
with your piece for a while, and this can make all the difference. Because
of the number of entries, the genre editor may assist the contest judge
in the reading process. For more information, please contact the managing
editor at sts@gmu.edu
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