We’re so pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, as chosen by judge Kristen Arnett.
Congrats to Kate, Joseph, and Susie!
Grand Prize
“Bears and Other Beasts” by Kate Finegan
Kate Finegan is editor-in-chief of Longleaf Review, novel/novella editor at Split/Lip Press, and author of the chapbooks The Size of Texas (Penrose Press, 2018) and Ablaze (Sonder Press, October 2020). Her work has won The Fiddlehead’s short fiction prize and been runner-up for The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize. It has also appeared in Minola Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Grist, Witness, and elsewhere. She lives in Toronto, where she is at work on a short story collection and a novel. Find her online and on Twitter.
First Runner-up
“An Iconostasis” by Joseph Pearson
Joseph Pearson, born in Edmonton, Alberta, is a writer and cultural historian based in the German capital. His city portrait Berlin was published by Reaktion Press in 2017. Pearson is the essayist of the Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin. He has published with literary journals such as The New England Review and AGNI and press outlets including the BBC, Newsweek and Monocle Magazine. Having taught at Columbia University in New York City, he now lectures at the Barenboim-Said Academy, a peace project bringing together artists from the Middle East and North Africa. Pearson regularly presents on queer identities, for institutions such as the Goethe Institute-Canada/USA and on his blog, The Needle.
Second Runner-up
“Vigil” by Susie Taylor
Susie Taylor is a queer writer who lives in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her debut novel, Even Weirder Than Before, was published in 2019 by Breakwater Books. She was the winner of the 2015 NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging writers and was awarded the 2018 Lawrence Jackson Writers’ Award by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council. Her work has appeared in Geist, Riddle Fence, Room Magazine, RAWSIY II and elsewhere.
Please join us in congratulating our shortlist, longlist, and these three top winners!
In the meantime, our latest themed issue(VULGAR!) and short forms contest are open for submissions!