We’re happy to announce the winners of this year’s Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction contest, as chosen by judge Téa Mutonji!
Grand Prize
“Lady”
by Zilla Jones
Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian lawyer, anti-racist educator, mother, singer and writer from Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg.) She has been longlisted for the CBC short fiction competition, shortlisted for the Writers Union of Canada short prose competition and the Fiddlehead magazine short story competition, and won Honourable Mention in the Room magazine short fiction contest and first place in the GritLit festival short story contest. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire magazine and is forthcoming in the Malahat Review, as the winner of the Open Season fiction contest. She is currently polishing her first novel.
First Runner-up
“Ugly”
by Amorina Kingdon
Amorina Kingdon is a writer living in Victoria, British Columbia. She is the staff writer for Hakai Magazine, where she was awarded Best New Magazine Writer in 2017 by the National Magazine Awards. Her science writing has appeared in Best Canadian Essays 2020 (Biblioasis) and she has fiction forthcoming in Speculative North. When she’s not writing she can be found hiking around the hills of Vancouver Island, trying to learn ancient Sumerian, or figure skating, all of which she’s written stories about.
Second Runner-up
“The Coca-Cola Baby”
by Jessica Bloom
Jessica Bloom’s fiction has been published in Pithead Chapel (USA) and Sand Journal (Germany), both excerpts from a novel-in-progress. Other writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, Vice, Playboy and The Phnom Penh Post. She has a BFA in creative writing (University of Victoria), M.A. in media studies (Ryerson University) and M.A. in counselling psychology (Yorkville University). She lives in Toronto.
Please join us in congratulating these fabulous writers! The three winning stories will be published in PRISM international 59.4.
In other news, our 2021 Grouse Grind Lit Prize for V. Short Forms is open for submissions until May 1st/2021! Send us your flash fiction, micro-memoir, poetic hybrids and everything in between of 300 words or less. Anything goes—as long as it’s short!
We are also currently accepting submissions for PRISM issue 60.1: WONDER. Wonder invites the unknown, dances in the space between the stars, flits at the bottom of a microscope, swims in tide pools, and beckons us into the forest! We are accepting prose (approximately 4,000 words or less), and poetry (up to four poems, to a maximum of six pages). For general submissions guidelines and submittable link visit our submissions page here.