News:

Congratulations to the winners of our annual short story prize! And thanks to judge Gina Frangello for choosing our winners. 

Gina Frangello is the author of two critically acclaimed books of fiction, Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press 2010) and My Sister's Continent (Chiasmus 2006). She is the executive editor and co-founder of Other Voices Books and the editor of the fiction section at The Nervous Breakdown. Gina's short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a wide array of publications including Prairie Schooner, Fence, StoryQuarterly, and Swink. She teaches in Columbia College's Fiction Writing Department. and her novel, London Calling, will be published in 2012. Gina can be found online at www.ginafrangello.com.

All prize winners, plus two Honorable Mentions, will receive a free copy of The Great Books Foundation Short Story Omnibus. First prize will receive $400 and publication in TCR Online. Second prize will receive $200 and our two third prize winners will receive $75 each.

The winners:

First Prize: "The Cherry Tree" by Lowell Uda

Second Prize: "Stabbing Michael McDonald" by Dorian Kotsiopoulos

Third Prize: "The Blue Demon of Ikumi" by Kelly Luce and "I Listen to a Breath of Mine" by Matthew Hamity

Honorable Mentions: "Lake Trash" by Dan Moreau and "Softball" by Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf 

From Gina Frangello, on why she chose the winning story:

I chose "The Cherry Tree" for several reasons, one of which is that I thought the subject matter felt genuinely poignant and relevant in an organic, almost casual way (instead of being either defiantly mundane or "straining for Importance" in ways that feel more constructed), but mainly because I felt completely, 100% immersed in the subjective world view of the protagonist.  The way he saw things--from the merits of spanking his newly adopted kids who are barely more than toddlers, to the passionate way he feels about his wife--didn't strike me as always "conventionally sympathetic," but as unique, quirky and even at times problematic, but always believable.  I felt wholly convinced that he was living his life according to his personal creed.  Often, in fiction, even in stories with very strong voice, the sensibility/beliefs of the author creeps in through the cracks, and when a character views something in a different way than the way the author might, there is a sense of the author attempting to convince the reader that the character really believes such-and-such even though (wink-wink at the reader), WE know that's not how it is.  In "Cherry Tree," that veil felt completely removed.  The world felt fully the characters' and we intensely inhabited the skin of this new husband/father, who is perhaps in over his head.

Read the winning story, "The Cherry Tree"!