Home > PRISM Online > The 2021 Creative Nonfiction Contest Winners!

We received so many delightful and horrifying and hilarious and informative pieces of writing for this year’s contest. We’re honoured to announce the winners of this year’s Creative Nonfiction Contest, as selected by Marcos Gonsalez!


Grand Prize Winner

“Translation” by Emma Zimmerman

Emma Zimmerman is a Brooklyn-based writer, journalist, and MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at NYU. Her writing has appeared inTaproot Magazine, Runner’s World, Trail Runner, Canyon Voices, and Away Journal. She also hosts the Social Sport Podcast on endurance sports and social change. You can find her at emmamzimmerman.com.


First Runner-Up

“Pelvis” by Jess Taylor

Jess Taylor is a Tkaronto (Toronto) writer and poet. Her second collection, Just Pervs, was released by Book*hug in Canada in September 2019. Recently, Just Pervs was a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Fiction. A short story from that collection, “Two Sex Addicts Fall in Love”, was long-listed for The Journey Prize and included in The Journey Prize Anthology 30. The title story from her first collection, Pauls (BookThug, 2015), “Paul,” received the 2013 Gold Fiction National Magazine Award. Jess believes that collaboration and helping other writers is an important part of her writing practice. She is currently working on a novel, Play, a continuation of her life poem, Never Stop, and dreaming up other projects.


Second Runner-Up

“Notes from Encampment” by Daniel Kessel

A graduate of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden, Daniel Kessel was the recipient of an Interdisciplinary Fellowship for his research on the contemporary queer novel. His writing has appeared in Bending Genres, The Maine Review, The Huffington Post, and other publications. He currently teaches at Rutgers.


Congratulations to these three incredible writers and thank you to everyone who submitted and trusted us with their work. It was a pleasure to read your work and a difficult contest to judge! A big thanks to our contest judge Marcos Gonsalez for taking the time out of a busy fall teaching and writing schedule to pick our top 3!