Spring 2022 Winners and Launch Party Photos
Spring 2022 Winners
FICTION: The Weeping Woman by Victor Zepline
The Sci-Fi components of the short story are nuanced, clear, and drive the plot of the text forward in a gripping manner, allowing each individual character to feel real, unique, and genuinely fleshed out--in such a way that inspires the reader to care about the characters' outcomes. The conclusion of the short story, and the plot twist it entailed, was truly surprising and gutting, leaving the reader wanting (and needing) more. The author of this text utilizes the science fiction genre to interestingly tackle a decades-old question: what does a technologically superior future look like, and can we survive it?
CREATIVE NONFICTION: Vaporwave: Making Music Mortal by Alexander Reed
"Vaporwave Music" was chosen because of its creative synthesis of critical analysis and poignantly human details. Ostensibly an examination of a nearly extinct form of technology, this piece takes readers beyond nostalgia for lost forms, to questioning life and death--without verging into the overly sentimental. The writing is nuanced with careful and purposeful use of sensory images, which brings the reader to a subtle, surprising, yet ultimately satisfying emotional conclusion.
POETRY: The W is Capitalized by Kaitlyn VanWay
This poem offers a visceral glimpse into the grinding realities faced by so many people who relocate to the United States. Vividly described situations (“working a job where you never feel clean,” and “carrying a child who will / die for the country that hated you / burying your baby before he’s twenty,”) paint a country unwilling to put in the bare minimum effort required to correctly spell a name. This imagery effectively removes the fictional, idealized image of the United States that we find so often entertained in the collective imagination. This poem does a marvelous job capturing the disillusionment so many experience when attempting to find safety in the proverbial “American Dream.”
DRAMA/SCREENPLAY: Static by Thomas Bowling
"Static" presents a unique relationship between two tired souls in a Milwaukee diner set to the backdrop of an isolated and lonely society. Conceptually the piece plays out like a normal conversation between a diner patron and the worker closing up, but, as the interaction goes on, the two figures find solace in knowing they share the same unrelenting heartbreak and loss eerily similar to that of pandemic America. The constant static emitting from a nearby radio audibly carries the weight of both the deafening silence and conversational catharsis between the two characters.
ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY: Leader of the Jazz Band by Ashley Williams
The zealous energy of this piece is palpable! Sinuous movement, jagged geometrics, and bold lines collide into a visual crescendo. The warm against punctuational cool colors compositionally balance this harmoniously riotous work.
SHORT MOVIES: Nuclear by Julie Blackburn
"Nuclear" was a quick, fun watch that quickly set my brain turning-- it felt timely in a year when the words nuclear war seem to be on everyone's tongues.
Click on photos for full image.
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Aurora Blaine Gillingham and Kayla Rhoden
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Zoom |
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Brianna Neilen listening to the hosts discuss her artwork |
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Hannah Schenk reading her story, Reflection in the Murky Waters |
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Editor Logan Kling reading his haiku |
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Julie Blackburn's art in the launch slideshow. |
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Poet Katie Pennington |
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Poet Kearra Rozhon |
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Poet Peyton Bowling |
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Thomas Bowling reading his story, Vacuums |
