Announcing our 2026 POETRY & Creative Non-Fiction contest winners!
Poetry: Margalit Katz, “Groupthink”
Margalit Katz is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Arizona. They are the recipient of the 2026 Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship and have received support from Brooklyn Poets. Their work can be found in Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, Consequence Forum, TINGE Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, and elsewhere.
Judge Jennifer Espinoza:
“I love the way this poem is tight and concise in its articulation of an inherently expansive idea. “Groupthink” presents the reader with an instance we are all likely familiar with: the experience of an idea moving from the singular into the collective. Wisely, the speaker of this poem does not elaborate on what the specific idea might be, nor do they provide us with instructions on how to feel about it; rather, the emotion of this piece is conveyed through vivid language and brilliant, feverish imagery. The tension between clarity of meaning and ambiguity of emotion makes this poem feel electric and alive!”
Non-Fiction: Jeffrey-Michael Kane, “Fish Stories: A Memoir”
J.M.C. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk UK). Disabled, he writes from this learned experience as an ASD-1. His prose work has been published in more than three dozen literary journals & magazines. Kane was a finalist for the 2025 Welkin Prize for Fiction and received the Reader’s Choice Award, was Shortlisted for the 2025 Letter Review Prize for Short-Fiction, Shortlisted for and then named a finalist in the 32nd Annual Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest (2025), long-listed for the 2026 Bath Flash Fiction Contest (UK) and has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in New Orleans with his dogs and family where he works as an attorney.
Judge Sarah Fawn Montgomery:
“This piece is a stunning examination of storytelling, memory, legacy, and truth. Haunting and poetic, this piece is a masterful reflection on beauty, loss, and grief, each sentence a prism reflecting the writer’s humanity. Tenderness and vulnerability are powerful currents throughout this aquatic journey, tides that call readers back to this story and unique voice again and again.”
2027 Contest Guidelines (submissions open ~Sept 10):
- Fiction: one piece or several linked flash pieces (6000 words max)
- Poetry: 1-5 poems, ten pages max
- Winners receive: $250 each and publication in Prism Review
- Contest deadline: midnight, November 30. All entries are considered for publication; all entrants receive the issue featuring the winning works.
2025 winners
Fiction: Julie Trimingham, “Who by fire”
judge Mimi Herman: “With an opening line like, “Zombies, and also Jesus: things that are dead, and then not,” how can you help but keep reading? With subtlety and a staggering poignancy, “Who by fire” delves into the past of fifteen-year-old Lyric, as they attempt to stagger into the future–or even to find their footing in the present. I found myself caught up in every moment and memory, trusting this gifted writer to gather it all together in a stunning conclusion, which brought me to tears not only the first time, but each time I read this extraordinary story.”
Poetry: Yiskah Rosenfeld, “Laundry Tags”
judge Luivette Resto: “”Laundry Tags” places the reader in a childhood flashback that many of us can relate to: sleepaway camp. The poem takes us on a journey of necessary items and how a blanket can bring us back to painful and traumatic memories. However, in its beautiful narrative tone, the poem heals us by the closing line. Overall, the poem feels relatable and reads like a vignette, a close yet vivid picture of the speaker’s childhood memory, almost voyeuristic by how detailed it is.”
Prior Winners
2024
Fiction: Masha Shukovich, “The Invisibles”
judge Allison Wyss: “I love the shape and the radiance of “The Invisibles,” how every vivid and lyrical image returns, reconfigured, to accumulate both meaning and magic. And how, through the story’s particular logic (which is not reason but something stranger and wiser), we can almost wrap our brains around a mystery that is dark and terrifying–war, family, death–but no we can’t. We can never fully grasp it, and that is purposeful, a crucial aspect of the story’s devastating truth. But in the final moment–that flinging of gold teeth into the sky–there is such beauty and hope.”
Poetry: Anastasios Mihalopoulos, “Odysseus’ Apology to Laertes”
judge Douglas Manuel: From its first psychologically heavy line, “Some men raise their sons with fists,” “Odysseus’ Apology to Laertes” had me. The resolution of this evocative opening with the surprising prepositional phrase “of smoke” in the second line only endeared me closer to this speaker. This poem adroitly displays father/son drama with a mature understanding that rang true in Homer’s times and still echoes today. Good poems demand to be read again. I’m going to read “Odysseus’ Apology to Laertes” again right now.
2023
Fiction: Treena Thibodeau, “Good Bodies”
Judge Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi: “ I am so impressed by “Good Bodies,” and the way it throws a dozen exciting questions into the air, juggles them, and then stacks the responses elegantly in just a few thousand words. Will Oona’s affair be discovered? Will Mick’s anxiety spill out onto the alley? Will Kaia leave Ben? Will Oona ever bowl again? Will The Pinnacles take home the title? Even if some questions feel more central than others to the reader, each character is grappling with their own insecurities and disasters. Every character also has a unique superpower (whether it be will or humor or forgiveness) that allows them to pierce through the everyday shrapnel thrown their way. It’s a dark and humorous and beautiful world contained in these pages.”
Poetry: Kevin Griffin, “Shift”
Judge Leah Huizar: “In “Shift” the confluence of jazz and poetry make a music that feels its way through the terrors and pains of racial injustice, past and present. Readers are invited to listen and remember. Listen to how John Coltrane’s “Alabama” unwinds in memorial for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Listen to the ways that the language of poetry, too, can ring in readers minds at those “conjunctions pregnant with a bomb” and send its hearers into new territories of reckoning. This is a poem which invites reading aloud to experience all its lyric intensity and offerings.”
2022
Fiction: Julian Ramirez, “Miracle Hunting”
judge Carribean Fragoza
Poetry: Kay Lin, “Myopia”
judge Felicia Zamora
2021
Fiction: David Borofka, “Retirement Dogs”
judge Vanessa Hua: “This is a poignant and wry story about a woman who flees her marriage and comes back home to take care her ailing mother. Clear eyed, intimate, and unforgettable.”
Poetry: Maria Zoccola, “letters from ophelia”
judge Lynne Thompson: “This poem is assured in its momentum as well as in the music of that momentum. Where it is recognizable, it is comforting; where it is surprising, it blew the top of my head off. In the best way, I never took a breath while reading it aloud (repeatedly), and in the end, I was left gratefully gasping for air.”
2020
Poetry: ANNA SANDY-ELROD, “ONLY TWO”
judge Michelle Brittan Rosado:
Fiction: ALAN SINCIC, “PORTER MUST BE STOPPED”
judge Aurelie Sheehan
2019
Judged by Emily Geminder (fiction) and Genevieve Kaplan (poetry)
- Fiction: “Avian Duties,” by Courtney McDermott
- Poetry: “Situation Normal,” by Lisa Maria Martin
2018
Judged by Siel Ju (fiction) and Jared Stanley (poetry)
- Fiction: “Flight,” by David Borofka
- Poetry: “Promise to Recede,” by Jessica Morey-Collins
2017
Judged by Sean Bernard (fiction) and Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer (poetry)
- Fiction: “Lake Junaluska” by Matthew Everett
- Poetry: “Mt. Everest is” by Jonathan Greenhause
2016
Judged by Bryan Hurt (fiction) and Victoria Chang (poetry)
- Fiction: “Messiah Complex” by Michael Olin-Hitt
- Poetry: “Slow Motion Landscape” by Sam Gilpin
2015
Judged by Sean Bernard (fiction) and Jen Hofer (poet and translator)
- Fiction: “Sweeping Glass” by Matthew Di Paoli
- Poetry: “Your Place, Now” by JLSchneider
2014
Judged by Scott Nadelson (fiction) and Nathan Hoks (poetry)
- Fiction: “The Evaluation of Echoes” by Rob Schultz
- Poetry: “[Flight Fable]” by Anna Soteria Morrison
2013
Judged by Sandra Ramos O’Briant (fiction) and Karen An-hwei Lee (poetry)
- Fiction: “Carbon Copies” by Lucian Childs
- Poetry: “El Pasado Convertido en Fiera” by Jonathan Greenhause
2012
Judged by Amy Newlove Schroeder, author of The Sleep Hotel, the 2009 winner of the Field Prize in Poetry.
- Poetry: Nancy Hewitt, “Pressed”
2011
Judged by Lucy Corin (fiction) and Craig Santos Perez (poetry)
- Fiction: “Weatherization” by Becky Margolis
- Poetry: “From The Sublunary Year” by Mary Ann Davis