After reading through more than 300 pieces, the PRISM editorial team has chosen the top three winners of the Grouse Grind Literary Prize for V. Short Forms! Their themes run the gamut from a child with a voracious appetite for bureaucrats, a chef who cuts off his own leg, and pooping in the pool. We love that.
Keep your eyes out for these juicy stories in issue 58.1: FIGURES, due in October 2019.
Without further ado, here are the winners:
Grand Prize
“The Patron Saint of Butchers is also the Patron Saint of Surgeons and Abortions” by Dessa Bayrock (Ottawa, ON)
Dessa Bayrock lives in Ottawa with two cats and a variety of succulents, one of which occasionally blooms. She used to unfold paper for a living at Library and Archives Canada, and is currently a PhD student in English which involves folding and unfolding even more paper. Her poems have appeared in IDK Magazine, Cotton Xenomorph, and Poetry Is Dead, among others, and her work was recently shortlisted for the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors. She is the editor of post ghost press. You can find her, or at least more about her, at dessabayrock.com, or on Twitter at @yodessa.
First Runner-up
“The Half-Life of Swimming Lessons” by Traci Skuce (Cumberland, BC)
Traci Skuce lives in Cumberland, BC, with her husband and son. Her work has appeared in several literary journals, including The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, New Ohio Review, and Grain. She was longlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize, and in April 2020, her short story collection, Hunger Moon, will be released by NeWest Press. When she’s not writing, she’s found working in the college library, or wandering the forest trails.
Second Runner-up
“I Swallow Creatures Whole” by lue boileau (Toronto, ON)
lue boileau is a storyteller with roots in Portland, Jamaica and born in Canada. Her most recent publication was released as part of the Unpublished City Vol. II collection, edited by Dionne Brand. She is a Banff Centre Writers’ Studio Artist in Residence for the 2019 spring program, and an upcoming participant at the Middlebury BreadLoaf Writers Conference. lue has shared stages across North America over ten years performing storytelling and poetry. Her work is focused on Caribbean histories, environmental futurism, and black speculative fiction. lue’s forthcoming work of afro-futurist fiction, A Whistling Woman is her first full-length collection.
Congratulations, once again, to these incredible writers! Give them a high-five (IRL or virtual) on our behalf.
PRISM’s next contest, the Creative Non-fiction Contest, closes on July 31.