The Journal is very pleased to announce the winners of our annual contest in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for 2013.

Fiction: “She Threw Herself,” by Lia Silver.

Silver received her MFA in fiction from Washington University in Saint Louis, where she also went on to hold a residency. She lives in Athens, Ohio with her family, and her fiction has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review.

In the words of judge Claire Vaye Watkins:

“She Threw Herself” is a terribly witty, slyly melancholy story about a couple whose youthful whimsy deposits them in the foothills of Southern Ohio. The main character, Glenna, resignedly tromps through a warped pastoral that might have been conjured by Lore Segal or Lorrie Moore. But the writing is completely its own: playful descriptions, fond characterization, and a bold, self-assured structure. “She Threw Herself” is dark, charming, confident, and extraordinary.

Nonfiction: “The Story,” by Rebecca James.

James was born in Hershey, Pennsylvania and graduated from Susquehanna University in 2013 with a degree in creative writing. She is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Judge Ira Sukrungruang had the following to say about “The Story”:

I won’t say “The Story” is brave or courageous or any of the other things critics like to label nonfiction that deals with rape. I don’t think I need to. It was not the topic of this essay that had a profound effect on me. It was its expert execution. Its stunning revelations, its well crafted prose. Reading “The Story” made me feel like I was in conversation with the author and her various voices, as if she were in my ear. It’s what Phillip Lopate says is essential in the personal essay, one person’s moment made universal. This was a tough read, a lovely read, a necessary read. A piece of nonfiction is not brave or courageous because of its topic. It is brave and courageous because of its insight. “The Story” provides just that.

Poetry: “Home,” Safiya Sinclair.

Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and received her MFA in poetry at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Catacombs, a chapbook of essays and poetry, published by Argos Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, Devil’s Lake, The Atlas Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a writing fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Amy Clampitt Residency Award, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from Aspen Summer Words, and an Academy of American Poets Prize; she has won the 2013 Devil’s Lake Driftless Prize in Poetry and The Journal Annual Poetry Contest in 2013. She is currently pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Doctoral Fellow.

Judge Aimee Nezhukumatathil explains her choice:

This poem’s musicality simply electrified me from the get-go. I marvel at the way such a strange and somber beast—a poem confronting diaspora—gets depicted in elemental architecture and sensuous language. This is a full-bodied poem, quietly disarming in its cool and mysterious reflections on what it means to be home.

We are thrilled to be publishing the winning entries in our Winter Issue, coming out this January. We’d like to thank all our contestants for giving us the privilege of reading their great work and our wonderful judges for lending us their time and keen eyes. Until next year!