We are pleased to announce the winners and finalists of the Terrain.org 14th Annual Contests in Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction.
Each winner is awarded a $1,000 prize, while each finalist is awarded $200. Winners and finalists will be published beginning in February in Terrain.org, and the winners will participate in the March 2023 Terrain.org online reading with a contest judge.
Poetry
Tim Raphael for “Prayer of a Nonbeliever”
Tim Raphael lives in Northern New Mexico between the Rio Grande and Sangre de Cristo Mountains with his wife, Kate. They try to lure their three grown children home for hikes and farm chores as often as possible. Tim’s poem’s have appeared in a range of literary journals in the West.
Judge Ross Gay says:
What a beautiful poem, made of such precise and considered lines, of words that labor to sound like what they mean—pinon-stippled hills; flake-white blossoms; petroglyph picked / into basalt—and of this climb toward what is a kind of turn in the poem, which is “another friend’s diagnosis.” It is the ever-changing land, “this green / green valley slaked on spring runoff,” and our stumbling through it, that is not exactly balm for such sorrow, but at least gives us the ground upon which to join it. A poem sometimes takes us there. For which: thank you.
The finalists in poetry are “Big Day” by John Calderazzo, “something was on fire nearby” by Mare Heron Hake, “The Griffin Vulture’s Prayer” by Frank Paino, and “Prehistoric Love Story” by Clara Trippe, and the semifinalist is “Chuang Tze” by Bruce Bond.
Nonfiction
“Equations for a Falling Body” by Kathryn Duane
Katie Duane is a writer, mixed-media artist, and educator. She currently resides in Buffalo, New York, and teaches visual arts in the Buffalo City Schools. Her writing has appeared in Permafrost Magazine, Sheepshead Review, and elsewhere.
Judge Toni Jensen says:
In language both forensic and evocative, “Equations for a Falling Body” delves into what it’s like to be stuck or in stasis. Throughout the essay, the narrator works to find meaning in moving through her everyday life. A day spent skydiving forms the plot of the piece, but the essay’s real heart beats around more ever-present questions: how to live fully, how to find connection, how to feel something. The narrator’s journey is told with care and precision, in unexpected ways, through unexpected language and imagery. The overall effect is moving.
The finalists in nonfiction are “Standing Still” by Elmaz Abinader and “An Acre of Darkness” by Ellen Goldstein.
Fiction
Hannah Smith for “Bust”
Hannah Smith is a writer from Dallas, Texas. Her creative work has been published or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.
Judge Talia Lakshmi Kolluri says:
“Bust” is a deeply evocative story about a woman severed by trauma from a sense of connection to her body, who nevertheless is immersed in the physicality of the world around her. As Dottie moves through the motions of managing her family’s business, a lodging house for workers in a Texan oil-town, we are swept into her perceptions of the world that surrounds her. Elms lining the roads she drives catch her thoughts in the tangle of their branches, the lines on her palms mirror a gathering of twigs in a bird’s nest, the clang of a rusty pumpjack summons her to linger beneath it. Lushly rendered in prose that reveals both the spare desolation of her disconnection, and the corporeality of her daily life, this story reverberates like a fracking tremor.
The finalists in fiction are “Omicron” by Craig Chen and “Headstones” by Dylan Fisher.
Judges
Poetry: Ross Gay
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His new collection of essays, Inciting Joy, was released by Algonquin in October of 2022.
Nonfiction: Toni Jensen
Toni Jensen is the author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. An NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient in 2020, Jensen’s essays have appeared in Orion, Catapult and Ecotone, among others. She is also the author of a short story collection, From the Hilltop. She teaches at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Fiction: Talia Kakshmi Kolluri
Talia Lakshmi Kolluri is a mixed South Asian American writer from Northern California. Her debut collection of short stories, What We Fed to the Manticore, is a finalist for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2023 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, and was selected as a 2023 ALA RUSA Notable Book. Her short fiction has been published in the minnesota review, Ecotone, Southern Humanities Review, The Common, One Story, Orion, Five Dials, and The Adroit Journal.
Next Contest
We will begin accepting submissions for the 15th Annual Contests in Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction on May 1, 2024. The submission deadline is September 2, 2024 (Labor Day in the U.S.). Judges will be announced in April.
For additional information, view the contest guidelines or contact us.
Header photo by Danie Bester, courtesy Pixabay.
