FIRST PRIZE WINNER

Shannon Fandler
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

AT YOUR INVITATION

Though there were petite crab hors d’oeuvres fried to crispy distraction and a glistening beet salad arranged with a jeweler’s attention to light on facets, followed by a rare beef resting slick and fat among new baby potatoes in chive-flecked cream that I licked from my fingers with a pleasure never before associated with you, brought to conclusion by a dessert table of such butter-scented indulgence that your sculptural wedding cake played second fiddle, I still can’t get over you preferring to marry such a large woman.

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100 word stories are a tough trick to pull off. They require details – but just the right ones. A storyline that has a progression and resolution – in the space of 100 words. A narrative voice (regardless of which point of view the author chooses to take) that is distinctive. And it needs, as all good stories do, to be original.

This piece pulls all of those things off beautifully. We are sucked into the orgy of culinary details and are either entranced or turned off by the narrator’s absorption in them (either way works for the purpose of the story). We know the story can only have 100 words, so perhaps the back of your mind starts tickling with the question – why give so much space to descriptions of food? And just as the descriptions start becoming too much to bear (trying reading it out loud; you’ll run out of air before you run out of words), the tone suddenly reverts to a flat and completely revealing statement. We know the story without being told what it is – and the fact that the whole story is one sentence reinforces everything the author is trying to get across. Brilliant. E.B.

SECOND PRIZE WINNER

L. E. Grabowski-Cotton
Memphis, Tennessee

THE WOMAN WHO LIVED IN SHOES

Her propensity to acquire shoes was only matched by her habit of accumulating hats. A jack-in-the-box, she popped into boutiques to make purchases, then scurried home to store them away. One day, and this was right after Leonard left, she saw me buy a cashmere cap. “You have exquisite taste,” she remarked. “Would you like to come visit me?”

Her home was a live-in-closet; sandals lining the shelves, heels hung on massive wood frames, fedoras covering the counters. I became her personal shopper. My feet give birth to her shoes, my head to her hats. My life has purpose.

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“The Woman Who Lived in Shoes” has a deliciously fresh feel to it. The vocabulary pops (”propensity,” “accumulating,” “scurried,”), and the play off the nursery rhyme is clever. And yet there is a sad undercurrent, given to us in bits. The nursery rhyme reminds us that the woman lives in a house filled with shoes, not a shoe filled with children. And the line “One day, and this was right after Leonard left, she saw me buy a cashmere cap” is masterfully done. Look at how the author dropped one of the most important pieces of information right into the middle of the sentence. It tells you everything you need to know about these women. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know who Leonard is; we can assume, and the fact that the narrator calls him “Leonard” and not “my husband” or “my boyfriend” is subtle proof that she hasn’t achieved any distance herself. E.B.

THIRD PRIZE WINNER

WANTS AND NEEDS

Diapers, bottles, and cute, tiny things. Blue or pink? It doesn’t matter. I won’t need it.

The clinic is two blocks over; I shouldn’t be here. There’s a pale, yellow blanket, too soft to let go. I don’t want it. No security tag. I take it.

Two blocks away, I smooth down my shirt over my still flat stomach. I don’t need this baby.

The receptionist stares at me through the window; I close my eyes and shut her out. The yellow is soft, caressing my cheek.

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Like the entry above, “Wants and Needs” has a narrative arc that offers us insights without telling us what they are. The author lets the items in the story – the diapers, the bottle, the yellow blanket – stand for the feelings the narrator is having. All her conflict about the baby she is going to abort, her desire, perhaps, to still be a child herself, can be seen in her decision to take that yellow blanket. In fact, I think this story would really soar if the author played even more off this strength – cutting the explanatory text (“I won’t need it.” “I don’t need this baby.”) and adding one more concrete detail that lets us know that we are in a store in the beginning (“Diapers, bottle, cute tiny things on the shelves” or something along those lines). Nice work. E.B.

FOURTH PRIZE WINNER

Virginia Farry
Old Hickory, Tennessee

QUESTIONS

"Can you tie-dye a snail?" my daughter asked.

"Excuse me?"

"What words are in this dictionary and not in that one?"

"I..."

"How come you have cigarettes but we don't have milk?"

I smiled at my daughter and told her to get her coat. We drove to the corner store where I bought her a scoop of chocolate ice cream, said it was better NOT to tie-dye a snail for the snail's sake, there was no way of knowing about the words, and I would quit smoking soon. Then I dropped her at her father's house and bought milk.

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“Questions” has a wonderful voice – bright and alive and intriguing. It’s a good trick to encapsulate a relationship in two voices and in less than 100 words, but this author does it beautifully. The child’s run-on questions; the mother’s inability to even get a word in edgewise or formulate an immediate response. The questions are fresh and original – they make us want the mother to buy milk for this smart little girl. Notice that we never know what this child looks like, though we have a clear image of who she is.
The one thing that holds this story back in my mind is that the resolution feels a little too easy – the child asks three questions and afterward everything is going to be better. The interesting thing about 100 word short stories is that things more often get complicated in them rather than simplified. They leave us pondering, much as life does. What would be the effect on us readers if the mother had simply dropped the child with the father, and we were left unsure about the fate of the milk? E. B.

Honorary Mentions, Listed in Alphabetical Order by Last Name

Kerrie Baldwin
Woodstock, New York
“L” Is For Letdown

Alaia Fayad
Comox, B.C.
Canada
“Goodbye”
Final Judge Erica Bauermeister commented, “I’d love to give Alaia Fayad special recognition, if only for the line, ‘The moment his lips had an affair with my cheek.’ Gorgeous.”

Susan Horikiri
New Westminister, B.C.
Canada
“When Jack Died”

Mikael Jansson
Vattenverksvagen
Sweden
“Waiting for Josef”

Georgia Luber
Los Angeles, California
“The Fifteen Year Old Virgin”

Kelly Matsuura
Kenpaku
Nagoya,Japan
“Dawn”

Kathleen McLeod
Glendale, California
“Light Years Away”

Ravo Randria
Paris, France
“Duet”

Christine Siddaway
Carlisle
Western Australia
“The Dry”

Joel Shulkin
Simpsonville, South Carolina
“No Small Challenge”