The Journal is proud to announce the winner of our annual contest in creative nonfiction:

“James and the Giant Noise Violation” by Robert Long Foreman

From the essay:

Halfway through October, James developed a terrible cough. When I first heard it, I thought he was throwing up, or choking. Lasting about fifteen seconds at a time, it was a genuine cough, one that came from the pit of his chest, or so I gathered from the sound. It was as if he attempted to expel a live wolverine from his torso, fur and all, but could not quite get it out. He sounded like a stuck drain, if one could cough. He sounded like Gollum.

I thought that if someone were to try to kill me by strangulation, and I could choose the murderer, I would choose James. I would hear him coming from a hundred feet away. He must have coughed twice a minute, every minute he spent awake. Eventually, I came to rely on his cough for a sort of metronomic consistency.

Robert Long Foreman is from Wheeling, West Virginia. His creative nonfiction has appeared in journals that include Michigan Quarterly Review, Alimentum, Massachusetts Review, Southern Indiana Review, and Pleiades, and has been listed twice in the Notable Essays of Best American Essays. He is completing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Missouri. His book manuscript, Ocracoke Island: A Memoir of Cruelty and Ice Cream, is being submitted to publishers by the Brattle Agency.

The essay will be available in the winter issue of The Journal.