Creative Nonfiction: 2017

First Prize: Snapshots Of A Summer

Eddie Virgo

Through dense fog, Sylvia and I ran down the barren street. It must have been four in the morning, yet neither of us showed signs of weariness. From above, we could hear the distant rumbling of thunder. ...

Second Prize: Chicken Soup

Athanasios Lazaro

It was a cool, crisp evening. The golden sun was setting over the distant horizon, painting the clouds red. Blood was spurting from the mutilated stump of the chicken’s twitching neck, painting the trees red. Life is a fragile, serious thing, is it not? ...

Third Prize: Blankey

Myra Molloy

I love my Blankey
She is green and pink and blue
Blankey loves me too ...

Alone, Together

Nicholas Combs

I am alone. Warm bodies surround me, preventing me from moving around in the cramped, humid subway car. The scents of trash, smoke, and human odor, mix together. I’m trapped in it, unable to get outside my own overworked mind.…

Third Eye

Lizzie Fasana

Clenching a pencil in his hands, my father begins to explain the size of my brain tumor. His fingers tremble as they trace the pencil’s lead, its bitten edges. His glazed eyes are transfixed on its exposed wood and its…

Deliver Him From Evil — The Birth And Death Of Addiction

Abby N. Wright

As winter turned to spring, dirt-encrusted snow melted into patches of flattened grass. Hunter sat inside his Honda Civic with his best friend Eve—a YMCA parking lot serving as that night’s drug venue. “Here, dude, try this. I just stole…

City of Promise

Jillian Schedneck

Every Tuesday and Thursday at dawn, I rode the 57 Bus into Kenmore Square–home of Fenway Park, the Citgo Sign, and Landsdowne Street, the center of Boston’s nightlife. By the time the sun peaked through the gray buildings on Commonwealth…

A Perfect Encounter

Jake Bennett

We met at a party. The kind of place I imagined many relationships form, without much hope of lasting. But our relationship was different. Certainly we believed it was. I suppose the main reason for this was that I was…

Topography

Douglas W. Milliken

Sometimes—while hiking stretches of the Appalachian Trail, while driving cross-country, while forging new relationships—I imagine myself an explorer discovering inhabited lands. I imagine myself surrounded by plants I have never seen, mountains I have never climbed, rivers I have never…