Winner: Dennis McFadden, “Yuppie in a Barn”
Runner up: Avah Dodson, “Shattered”
Finalists (in no particular order): Derick Chan, Deanne Coolidge, Susan Levine
The winner and runner-up will be published in the coming weeks online and in our next print issue.
The Judge’s Note
We humans are made up of stories. We collect them from the moment we’re born, and as the collection inside us grows and deepens, so does our understanding of ourselves and our appreciation the world around us.
Stories entertain us, shape us, inform us … and the very best of them live within us for a lifetime, becoming part of our personal mythology.
But who’s to say which stories are best? Most relevant or important?
When the editors of the Sacramento Literary Review invited me to judge this competition, I was honored. At the same time, I was acutely unaware of the responsibility such an undertaking would involve. There would be reading, yes—hours and hours of reading—followed by critiques and analysis, more reading and more analysis, and finally, inevitably, the agonizing decision as to which manuscript deserved top honors.
I wish I could say a competition like this is a fair one. But alas, it isn’t. If it were, each of the pieces that came into my hands would have already been recognized for its unique artistry, and each contestant would have been sent home with a hefty cash prize and the promise of publication.
But we all know the world of writing competitions is rarely so generous. Or egalitarian.
Nor can it afford to be.
By virtue of its nature a writing contest demands that there be one winner and one winner only. Which in turn means many stories of remarkable artistry go unsung and unheralded. So, to even the scales a bit, I’d like to take a brief moment, here and now, to thank each and every writer who participated in this contest for allowing me the privilege of reading their work.
The quality of these pieces was outstanding. The craftsmanship inspiring. And to those of you who achieved the status of ‘finalist’ I offer a hearty congratulations. Your work earned its place among the very best, and you should be proud of your accomplishment.
Now, on to the judging itself.
Five fine stories were passed my way, each of which was read blind, names redacted, with no accompanying notes, caveats, or suggestions. I was encouraged to follow my own editorial instincts, and was given free rein to select the winner based on literary standards of my own choosing.
This said, what I looked for in these works was what I look for in all stories. Originality. Authenticity. Passion. Grace. More than anything, I wanted to be surprised, swept up in narratives that possessed equal measures of depth and color … intellectual daring and artistic virtuosity. I wanted to find stories that breathed. Stories that laid bare the human heart. Stories that revealed unexpected, unanticipated truths. In short, I wanted to find works that rose above the academics of everyday craftsmanship. Pieces that were eager to scrap and brawl and muscle their way into the mythology of the soul.
I’m pleased to say I wasn’t disappointed. The works that came to me were fresh and vibrant, each with its own voice, its own characters, its own unique point-of-view.
One story, “Jim,” reached to penetrate the mysteries of grief and healing through the reflections of a young widower, a furniture maker who sees too much of his dead wife in another woman, yet can’t seem to shed his guilt over it.
Another, “Funnel,” examined the history of social injustice in a serpentine narrative where the central characters embark on a Quixotic journey for a special dish, chiles en nogada, pursuing it as if it were the Grail.
“The Ring Cycle” was yet another work of healing. In it, the narrator—a professional psychoanalyst (with ‘an unreasonable love of jewelry’) and recent victim of a devastating hysterectomy—finds unexpected solace in the midst of a patient’s therapy session.
One of my favorites of the contest was the story, “Shattered,” which invited the reader to witness the cold imaginings of a woman on the verge of a breakdown. The diction in this piece was impeccably controlled, and the writer’s methodical exposition of the character’s psychological disintegration was as palpable as it was wrenching.
There was one work, however, that stood apart from the others, tugging me back to its pages, again and again. Begging me to revel in its wickedness, and delighting me each time I did with an intoxicating dose of cold-blooded schadenfreude.
“Yuppie in a Barn” was a paradox. But a lovely paradox. The characters who inhabited it—greedy, angry, selfish, crass, damaged—were, to a person, ugly to the bone. Yet they were beautifully rendered, their motives skillfully and carefully exposed, which lent them each an unexpected sympathy despite their seemingly unredeemable natures.
There’s Chuckie, a brutish cuckhold who could barely be understood because of a near total glossectomy … Chuckie’s wife, Audrey, a self-deluded romantic with a Machiavellian soul … Jeffrey, Audrey’s foppish, cowardly paramour … and Arnold, the pain-in-the-ass stepson who everyone in the story seemed to want dead.
But the a stellar cast of characters is only the beginning.
Its many pleasures extend to every aspect of the story’s poetics.
The plot is steady and forward-moving, the imagery crisp and economical, and the voice that drives the drama forward is at once cruel, ironic, vicious and mesmerizing.
“Yuppie in a Barn” is the work of a skilled and confident hand. One whose testimony—from its first lines through its ironic and sadistic march to the end—bears witness to a brutal, mean-spirited, yet surprisingly sympathetic truth.
I’m pleased to name this story my first choice in the Sacramento Literary Review’s First Annual Story Contest. I truly hope it finds its way into the personal mythologies of all who read it.
— Judge Robert McGuill
