First place ($1000) is awarded to Emilia Phillips of Washington, New Jersey, for her essay “Excisions.” Phillips is the author of two poetry collections, Signaletics (2013) and Groundspeed (forthcoming 2016), from the University of Akron Press, and three chapbooks including Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike (Bull City Press, 2015). Her poems and essays appear in Agni, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry, West Branch Wired, and elsewhere. She is the Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Centenary College (NJ) and the 32 Poems interviews editor.

First runner up is awarded to Rachel Yoder of Iowa City, Iowa, for “There Is No House.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune, and has been awarded The Missouri Review Editors’ Prize for Fiction as well as runner up for the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction.

Second runner up is awarded to Drew Krepp of Baltimore, Maryland for “Lost in Sight of Land.” His debut novel, The Salt Marsh King, was published by Bancroft Press last year, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, The Masters Review, and others.

All three winning submissions will appear in StoryQuarterly 49. Our judge for this year’s competition was Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and The Gin Closet.