Announcing Our 2025 Literary Contest Winners
We received over 750 submissions to our literary contests this year in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction! The BR team loved reading your work and we were honored to send along the following finalists to our guest judges: Gabrielle Bates, Laura Chow Reeve, and Lilly Dancyger. Congrats to all our incredible winners (who will receive $1,000 as a prize), runners-up, and finalists! See our full list below. Stay tuned for Issue 91 for more!
49th PARALLEL AWARD IN POETRY (judged by Gabrielle Bates):
WINNER:
Lana Reeves, “How to Love a Sinking Island”
“I adore and admire this poem’s absolutely gorgeous sounds, its powerful accumulation of commands, and the tension of its many contrasts: how each element of the poem exists in service to a meaningful and complicated argument. Ode, lament, litany, song, and more, this poem does what my favorite poems do; it delights, instructs, and haunts. It rewards each additional reading and resonates deep in the heart. What a gift.” —Gabrielle Bates
RUNNERS-UP:
Jay Julio, “America, Land of the Bullet Hell”
Rema Ghassan Shbaita, “My aunt’s ring”
FINALISTS:
Zixuan Xin, “Longtang Sounds Best in Shanghainese & Contrapuntal”
Shaheen Dil, “Kanab”
Sonja Sharp, “My Father, Deconstructed”
Flannery Maeve Rollins, “I Wish God Didn’t Always Get Exactly What He Wants”
Ezra Fox, “What the Darkness Renders on the Question of Passing”
Emma Goldman-Sherman, “Ode to the Burner Boys”
Dolapo Demuren, “American Dream Sonnet as an Answered Prayer in Second and First Person”
Maya Salameh, “God and Language Make Grammar in a Backseat”
TOBIAS WOLFF AWARD IN FICTION (Judged by Laura Chow Reeve):
WINNER:
Rema Ghassan Shbaita, “Stones So Upset, They Turned Themselves Over”
“Told from the perspective of a young girl named Chicken living under the horrors of Israeli occupation, “Stones so Upset” is both clear-eyed and surprising. The story takes the reader on a should-be 30-minute drive turned harrowing search for Chicken’s Uncle in an unnavigable Jerusalem. Beautifully rendered, “Stones so Upset…” invites the reader to question what we assume is real and what is myth, and reveals the impacts of and resistance to occupation that can be found everywhere, even in the stones beneath our feet.” —Laura Chow Reeve
RUNNERS-UP:
Siavash Saadlou, “Think of the Sea”
Christopher Passante, “Flood”
FINALISTS:
Theresa Sylvester, “All My Timothys”
Stacy-Ann Ellis, “A Birth”
Megan Foley, “Survival Exhibit 27: Palliative Self Care”
Katie Harms, “The Circus”
Liam Keller, “Autocannibal”
Darcy Alvey, “Trace Evidence”
ANNIE DILLARD AWARD IN NONFICTION (Judged by Lilly Dancyger):
WINNER:
Linda Button, “The Wada Test”
“‘The Wada Test’ is a striking example of what the essay can do, operating on multiple emotional, thematic, stylistic, and formal layers at once. This piece is inventive and original, impactful and resonant.” —Lilly Dancyger
RUNNERS-UP:
Joseph Spring, “A Song and a Hope”
Rema Ghassan Shbaita, “2000-2005”
FINALISTS:
Maggie Hart, “Return to Iowa”
Jessica Petrow-Cohen, “Elsewhere”
Jessica Ketcham, “Eviction Notice”