We are pleased to announce the winners, finalists, and semifinalists of the Terrain.org 15th Annual Contests in Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction.
Each winner is awarded a $1,000 prize, finalists awarded $200, and semifinalists are awarded $100. Winners, finalists, and semifinalists 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
“The Dove” and “O” by Julia B. Levine
Julia B. Levine’s poetry has won many awards, including a 2021 Nautilus Award for her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, as well as the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight. Recently she has won s 2024 Pushcart Prize, the 2023 Oran Perry Burke Award from The Southern Review, the 2022 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, the 2020 Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Award, and a 2022 American Academy of Poetry Poet Laureate Fellowship for her work in building resiliency in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science, and technology. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation and Prairie Schooner. She received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University.
Judge Paisley Rekdal says:
“The Dove” and “O” are lovely, and have a real psychological toughness to them, an awareness of how we live caught between brutality and joy. Here the poet is trying to navigate which self s/he chooses to remember: the one who experiences and also causes (human, personal, ecological) pain, or the one who finds beauty in surviving the pain of the world. I find these poems personally moving, formally deft, and psychologically complex.
The finalists in poetry are “We Considered Ourselves to Be a Powerful Culture” and “Transdifferentiation” by William Ward Butler and “Refrains”, “On First Looking into the IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius”, “Follies”, “From Another Litany”, and “Pastoralesque” by Matthew MacFarland.
The semifinalists in poetry are “A Personal History of Camouflage”, “Cumberland Island, Evening” and “Letter from Atlantis” by Dan Barton; “Cicada” and “Sixteen Wasps Dead in the Door Frame” by Zoe Boyer; “Liminal Blue” by Jenny Qi; and “Joining the Crows” and “Dragonfly or Drone?” by Jane Satterfield.
Nonfiction
“Essay Made of Little, Lonely Bones” by L.I. Henley
L.I. Henley was born and raised in the Mojave Desert of California. Her essays on pain, illness, and the Mojave Desert have won the Arts & Letters/Susan Atefat Prize and the Robert and Adele Schiff Award. “A Blur on the Spine,” originally published by Southern Humanities Review, is a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2024.
Judge Taylor Brorby says:
By contrast, strange and wonderful, this essay is a buffet of seemingly random topics–whale songs, sex, cysts, bones, snow in the desert–that come together to make a delightful literary meal. Muscular, straightforward prose blends with beautiful imagery to underscore the complex reality of having a complicated body on this planet. I read and reread sentences for their poetic fiber. The form met function in this wonderful essay.
The finalists in nonfiction are “Shelter” by Judith Frankel and “The Remnant” by Dan Ibarra.
The semifinalists in nonfiction are “Centralia: A Scatterplot of Slow Violence” by Jodi Cressman, “Beyond the Mine” by Nicholas Crane Moore, and “The Sea Doesn’t Give AF It’s Your Honeymoon” by Corrie Lynn White.
Fiction
“Endlings” by Seth Borgen
Seth Borgen’s work has appeared in Story, Water~Stone, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. His first book, If I Die in Ohio, received the New American Fiction Prize. He received his MFA from the University of Mississippi and lives in Ohio.
Judge Manuel Muñoz says:
“Endlings” is a gem of a story that is reverent about the mysterious feeling of place and the conviction we sense that something extraordinary has happened before we got there. Indeed, it reminds us that places don’t need us to tell their tales. “Endlings” affirms that stories take place without our witness all the time and that every place, however high or low, holds the sacredness of life, death, and renewal.
The finalists in fiction are “Elephants on Parade” by April Darcy, “Endangered Species” by Suzanne Kehm, and “Clack” by Amanda Silva.
Next Contest
We will begin accepting submissions for the 16th Annual Contests in Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction on May 1, 2025. The submission deadline is September 1, 2025 (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 Petra, courtesy Pixabay.
