First place ($1000) is awarded to Wendy Call of Seattle, Washington, for “Apothecarium,” an essay part of a cycle titled Grief Ephemera. Other essays in this series have been published in the American Journal of Nursing, Bellingham Review, Georgia Review, and Yes! magazine. She is co-editor of Telling True Stories (Plume, 2007) and author of No Word for Welcome (Nebraska, 2011), winner of the Grub Street National Book Prize for Nonfiction. She teaches creative writing and environmental studies at Pacific Lutheran University.

First Runner-up is awarded to J.L. Cooper, a writer and psychologist in Sacramento, California, for “The Sages of West 47th Street.” Cooper is winner of the Tupelo Quarterly prose open prize, TQ9, judged by Adam Johnson. Additional awards are First Place in Short Short Fiction in New Millennium Writings 2013, and Second Place in Essay in Literal Latte, 2014. His short stories, poetry, and a craft piece have appeared or are forthcoming in The Manhattan Review, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Paper Swans Press, Gold Man Review, KY Story, Temenos Journal, The Tishman Review, Hippocampus, Folia Literary Magazine, The Sun (Reader’s Write), and in other journals and anthologies. A full length collection of poetry is forthcoming from WordTech.

Second Runner-up is awarded to Sarah McColl of Brooklyn, New York, for “How Sad, How Lovely.” McColl received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College this past May, and her writing has appeared in South Dakota Review, In Context Journal, and a forthcoming essay anthology from University of Nebraska Press.

All three winning submissions will appear in StoryQuarterly 50, which will be out in January 2017. Our judge for this year’s competition was Meghan Daum, author of the nonfiction books My Misspent Youth: Essays, Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion; the novel The Quality of Life Report; and editor of the anthology Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids.