It’s that time again: our Flash 405 contest is back in session!
Flash 405 is Exposition Review’s multi-genre short form writing competition, awarding cash prizes and online publication to the winners. You can read the full rules and find past contests and winners here. Entries for our next round will be accepted from June 4–July 5, 2019 via Submittable.
Read on to learn more about this month’s judge and theme:
– June 2019 Round –
The Judge: CD Eskilson
Christopher “CD” Eskilson is a poet, editor, and bookseller from Southern California. They’re an associate editor for Exposition Review and an editor emeritus for foothill: a journal of poetry. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Teen Vogue, Yes Poetry, After the Pause, and Butter, among others. They like coffee and reenacting David Lynch movies. Find them on Twitter at @CdEskilson.
The Theme: Legacy
From CD:
“June bears special weight this year in LGBTQ+ circles. In addition to being annual Pride month across the country, June 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. One of the most pivotal events in the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States, the uprising saw community members of the Stonewall Inn demonstrate and protest continued NYPD raids on the establishment and the larger criminalization of their identities.
LGBTQ+ folks today owe much to the work and sacrifice of those who participated in the rebellion 50 years ago. Transgender elders such as Sylvia Rivera, Marsha Johnson, and Miss Major played key roles at Stonewall and continued to advocate for LGBTQ+ people in coming decades. The continued LGBTQ+ rights movement extends out of their struggle those nights in June and afterwards.
A legacy serves as a map through generations. It charts where our forebears went and what they faced, and what got us the ground we stand on. An elder’s legacy holds a past that helps explain our present moment, but it also helps us navigate our future. It shows us what work needs to be done and, hopefully, how to do it.
Tell me what legacy you’re following. Its contours, and where it takes you. Where did your spiritual ancestors walk so you may run? Perhaps their pasts haunt you in the night; perhaps you try desperately to flee their shadows. What past guides your present to the future? What legacy are you leaving?”
Ready to starting writing? We accept short form narratives in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, stage & screen, and experimental. Please note that all submissions are blind.
Good luck!
[…] the stage to our audience. We gave them ten minutes to write on CD Eskilson’s Flash 405: “Legacy” theme (winners coming soon), and had a chance to hear a few readings that transformed the plays […]