StoryQuarterly announces the winners of its 2014 Essay Contest:

First place ($1000) is awarded to Elizabeth Hoover of Harrisonburg, Virginia, for her essay “Smudge.” Hoover’s poetry has recently appeared in PANK and The Los Angeles Review. Her essay “Phantom Language” was featured in Lunch Ticket as a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Award. Hoover is the assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.

First runner up ($500) is awarded to Melissa Febos of Brooklyn, New York, for “The Book of Hours,” and second runner up ($250) is awarded to Brad Aaron Modlin of Columbus, Ohio, for “Thomas.”

All three winning essays will appear in StoryQuarterly 48.

Maggie Nelson–the author of Bluets; The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning; Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions; The Red Parts: A Memoir; as well as four books of poetry–was this year’s contest judge.First place ($1000) is awarded to Elizabeth Hoover of Harrisonburg, Virginia, for her essay “Smudge.” Hoover’s poetry has recently appeared in PANK and The Los Angeles Review. Her essay “Phantom Language” was featured in Lunch Ticket as a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Award. Hoover is the assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.

First runner up ($500) is awarded to Melissa Febos of Brooklyn, New York, for “The Book of Hours,” and second runner up ($250) is awarded to Brad Aaron Modlin of Columbus, Ohio, for “Thomas.”

All three winning essays will appear in StoryQuarterly 48.

Maggie Nelson–the author of Bluets; The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning; Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions; The Red Parts: A Memoir; as well as four books of poetry–was this year’s contest judge.