Announcing our 2023-2024 Big Sky, Small Prose Winners:

WINNER: Julia LoFaso, “Water Healing”

Praise from guest judge Micah Fields:

"I want to tap my own spring," LoFaso asserts in the concluding lines of "Water Healing," a masterfully concise essay about bridges and the power of what lies beneath them. Like most great essays, LoFaso's brings the reader along in the process--however messy and winding it may be--of the writer's honest search for something (meaning, truth, memory, beauty, connection, et al.) As "Water Healing" insightfully toggles between the practice of hydropathy, the saga of the Brooklyn Bridge's construction, and the author's own draw to the water as a link between present and past selves, we are there to draw the invisible lines connecting stories, learning in real-time to construct the tension cables and calculate curves the way engineer John Roebling's wife Emily did when "water-curing" could not save his life. LoFaso's meditation on postpartum existence and the draw of water builds an intricate collage worth studying again and again.

Julia LoFaso is writing a hybrid collection about weird motherhood and various forms of solace seeking. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Wigleaf, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, and others. More of her writing is available at julialofaso.com.

RUNNER-UP: Elita Suratman, “Brown Paper Package”

Praise from guest judge Micah Fields:

In a brief yet moving recollection, "Brown Paper Package" explores the author's relationship with the culinary ephemera of Ramadan, a tradition the writer has "long transgressed since moving to the U.S." Each delicately rendered image in the essay forms the author's own "private cultural cache," a chorus of carefully wrapped pastries and Malay spices that conjure scents of a life once lived far away. To open the package each year is a kind of homecoming and aching nostalgia for the author, as bittersweet as the parcel's contents.

Elita Suratman emigrated from Singapore with dreams of following in her father’s footsteps as a writer. A master’s degree, family and a twenty-year marketing career later, she’s discovering her writing roots, working on a cross-continent memoir on her flyway toward self-identity. Excerpts can be found in Flights and Herstry. You can find more of her work here: http://elitasuratman.com/.

RUNNER-UP: Alan Sincic, “Fuse”

Praise from guest judge Micah Fields:

"Fuse" is a thrilling and crafty little sentence of an essay. It's a piece of art about art, which is to say it's about everything, and the writer handles the scope of this task with a deft hand. The work is playful and profound. Not only did I love reading it, but it reminded me why I love reading.

Alan's fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, The Greensboro Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Boulevard Online, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Recent stories won contests sponsored by Hunger Mountain, Prime Number, The Texas Observer, Orison, Meridian, Azure and others. You can visit him at alansincic.com.

**All three of these finalists will be published in issue 100 of CutBank, our winter/spring issue. Stay tuned in 2024 for details!**

Exciting Upcoming Contests

February 26, 2012

It gives us great pleasure to announce our 2nd ever Big Fish Lyric Essay and Writers on Writing Contest! A prize of $200 and online publication will be awarded to the best piece of nonfiction writing under 5,000 words that we receive in one of the following categories:

THE LYRIC ESSAY: Innovative, sonically pleasing nonfiction prose on any topic is welcome in this category. John D'Agata quoting his teacher Deborah Tall once suggested that a lyric form of the essay "is a kind of essay propelled not by its information, but rather by the possibility for transformative experience." CutBank likes this definition, but we're also excited to see how you interpret such a malleable genre.

WRITERS ON WRITING: We're looking for original, personal takes on the literary arts--form is largely up to you. We're hoping to receive your best craft essays, stylistic manifestos, and impressions on why writing matters. You might even take a crack at defining the lyric essay for us. Smart, self-referential fiction pieces that illuminate the writing process or the importance of writing are also welcome in this category.

The contest winner will be chosen by the CutBank editorial staff and announced on our website May 1. All submissions will be considered for both online and print publication in CutBank. Submissions are accepted from March 1 to April 1 and must be accompanied by a $9 submission fee. Previously unpublished work only. Multiple submissions are acceptable, as long as each one is accompanied by its own submission fee. Simultaneous submissions are also acceptable, but please withdraw your work promptly if it is accepted elsewhere.