We were honored to have Deesha Philyaw, author of Secret Lives of Church Ladies, and Randall Horton, author of Dead Weight, as the 2022 judges for Fiction and Non-Fiction.
Congratulations to the winners…
Fiction: Gail Upchurch, “Broken Thing”
Non-Fiction: Hank Kalet, “As I Learn From You”
Of the winning story Deesha states:
“Writing with subtle strokes and exquisite emotional detail, Gail Upchurch captures longing and loss in breathtaking ways. "Broken Thing" sneaks up on you leaving a quiet devastation in its wake.”
Of the winning essay Randall states:
"As I Learn from You" captured the spirit of the Bladwin essay, while standing on the shoulders of Baldwin in a way that is complementary while expanding the idea of cultural critique and self-analysis.”
We are deeply grateful to Deesha and Randall’s for their time and energy making these selections.
We would also like to congratulate the finalists and applaud all the writers who entered the contest showcasing amazing and urgent work from around the world.
Randall Horton is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Randall has conducted workshops, lectured and toured numerous adult and juvenile detention centers across the nation to provide encouragement and hope for those entangled within the legal system. Dr. Horton is currently the only tenured full Professor in the United States of America at a university of college with seven felony convictions. He is the author of Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays and many other works.
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.