Announcing Our 2024 Literary Contest Winners, Runners-up, and Finalists!

For our 2024 literary contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, we received almost 750 entries! Wow! Thank you for sharing your brilliant work with us and our guest judges. The Bellingham Review team is thrilled to announce our contest winners, runners-up, and finalists. We will be spotlighting the work of our contest winners, who will receive a prize of $1,000, in issue 89. Congrats to all!

Words from our judges about our incredible winners:

Poetry Winner: Kira Hodgson, “So, you’re all good now?”

“So, you’re all good now?” takes the reader on a short but biting ride through grief—one’s own body and the body of others. The couplets and the eventual dissolving of them, provide a structural representation how the body dissolves from disease and from death itself. Ending in a garden recalls how Eve in the Garden of Eden was made, but instead of being deceived, belittled, or made villainous, the speaker here revels in the beauty of what they are given and have amid “the storm”: a body soaked in nourishment, comfort, and agency."
- Luther Hughes

Fiction Winner: Ye Ning, "Aquarium"

"In an unnamed city, performers are hired to act as "human fish" in a life-size aquarium. From its opening sentence, "Aquarium" beguiles with its eerie disembodiment; its moody and elegant descriptions; and its cynical--and slightly wistful--satire meditating on the desire for and the impossibility of an unalienated life."
- Cleo Qian

Nonfiction Winner: Nikolas Chang Hoon Nadeau, "Abandoned Supposings: A Letter to My Non-Father's Silence"

"Abandoned supposings: A letter to my non-father's silence" is a moving invitation into a complex relationship between an adoptee in adulthood and an estranged birth parent. The epistle weaves throughout two generations of history, documents the creation of personal archives, and considers the impacts of fuzzy memory and translation, resulting in a beautifully complicated, textured reading experience. We are so lucky to witness the writing, the remembering, and the subsequent rewriting before settling into something like resolution on behalf of this writer."
- Emilly Prado



We also wanted to give a shout-out to our amazing finalists:

Poetry: 

Veronica Schorr, "The Other Day," (Runner-up)
Lindsay Wilson, "Letter to You About My Need for Better Language' (Runner-up)
Tyler Hurula, “the one about the girl and the closet”
Vi Ly, “genesis”
Andrea Carter, “Homesickness”
Jana-Lee Germaine, “What the Officer Said”
Taylor Lewis Guthrie Hartman, “poem about my mother being most like a great blue heron…”
Rhea Harrison, “White Noise”
Purvi Shah, “Uncolonial this shelter, home my skin…”
Alina Nguyen, “Poetry House”
Reverie Koniecki, “the year of the deductible”

Fiction:

Delight Ejiaka, "We Are All Mad Women" (Runner-up)
Margaret Campbell, "30th Street Station" (Runner-up)
Bruna M. Barbosa, “Bite Like Chocolate"
Joseph Tepperman, “Funeral at the Encampment"
Areej Quraishi, “Chudail"
Hillary Behrman, “Lake Effect"
Benjamin Owens, “Childhood Nightmares"
Kate Fitzgerald, “Bad Girl"

Nonfiction:

Theresa Marl, "Unravel" (Runner-up)
Jax Connelly, "What It Was" (Runner-up)
Aria Dominguez, "Jeff's Auto"
Ruby Murray, "Osage Indian Baptist"
Kelly Q Anderson, "The First Bowel Movement After Childbirth"
Celeste Chan, "The Static Image"
Liv Kane, "Feedings"
Carrie South, "Glass Child"