We are pleased to finally share the winners of “Otherworldly,” our August 2024 Flash 405 contest. With this announcement, our Flash 405 2024 season officially come to a close, but we are ending an incredibly strong note! Overall the submission quality for this contest was very high, and there were no easy decisions for our guest judge Dr. Cecilia Caballero! In the end, though, decisions were made, and our winners and honorable mentions truly encapsulate the call for stories that contain “something a bit strange about otherworldly ways we survive the every day.” We hope you enjoy these five stories as much as we do.
Congratulations to our winners! Their work can be read below.
Judge’s Comments:
It was an immense pleasure to read each of the 14 finalist pieces for the Flash 405 contest on the theme of “Otherworldly,” and I extend my gratitude to the excellent Expo crew for selecting these wonderfully weird submissions out of a larger pool. I was very impressed with the way that writers took on the theme of “the otherworldly” as their own, blurring the lines between fact and fiction and prose and poetry.
It was very difficult to make my selections, but I ultimately chose pieces that blended the experimental alongside the every day, which I believe is needed now more than ever during these tumultuous times. They demonstrate why we must imagine otherwise. The otherworldly is here in their words.
– Dr. Cecilia Caballero
1st Place:
River of Stars by Melissa L. Bennett (Nonfiction)
2nd Place:
Chile Season by Lorinda Toledo (Nonfiction)
Honorable Mention:
El mundo te canta by Ana Maria Mina Hernández (Poetry)
Bruja by MaHo Pita (Fiction)
we are all part of the same estuary by Morgan Ridgway (Fiction)
Congratulations again to the winners!
Our next Flash 405 will open in February. In the meantime, check out past contests and winners here, or learn more about submissions for our next annual issue, Vol. X: “Spring”, which is currently open and accepting submissions until Dec 15, 2024.
For more submission opportunities, publication news, events, reading recommendations, and more, sign up for the Expo Extra newsletter.
Photo by Hu Chen