Shenandoah Announces Winner of 2014 Bevel Summers Prize for the Short Short Story
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| âChurch Retreat, 1975â by Emily Pease of Williamsburg, Va., won the 2014 Bevel Summers Prize for the Short Short Story, sponsored by âShenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review.â
The honorarium for the prize is $1000 and publication in âShenandoah.â Pease teaches at The College of William and Mary and has previously won the Editorâs Prize from âThe Missouri Review.â
The final judge was Nick Ripatrazone, author of âThis Darksome Burn,â (Queenâs Ferry Press). His citation for the winning entry reads as follows:
âA haunting, finely-crafted scene that reverberates into the pasts and futures of all characters involved. Pease masters this short form with phrases and images that make the reader conclude these lives are worthy of a much longer narrative, and yet somehow this single sequence on the beach, where âno one missedâ these two girls, wounds through its brevity.â
Ripatrazone says of the story named runner-up, âTorque and Slippage,â by Danilo Thomas of Tallahassee, Fla., âThe narrator assures that âwe weren't killers,â but the sentence-to-sentence punch of this suggests otherwise. It is a troubling lyric representation of a descent into violence and the questions that remain afterward.â
âThe Last Landmineâ by Nancy Taylor of San Francisco, Calif., and âThe Sladesâ by Melanie Faith of Mercersburg, Pa., received honorable mention and will, with Thomas's piece, be published in the fall issue of âShenandoah,â due to appear in October.
Over 1,000 entries were submitted to this year's Bevel Summers contest, and the 2015 contest will take place in the spring. Interested parties should watch the Prizes link on âShenandoah'sâ website (shenandoahliterary.org) in 2015 for further information. | | | |
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