An excerpt from The Perpetual Motion Machine, winner of the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award (forthcoming, fall 2018)
Every Thursday Skyler accompanies me to my ice skating lesson. He’s a much more ...
Square Pizza by Brittany Ackerman
Award Winners, LAR Online, Nonfiction
This little story is packed with meaning, as juicy and fat as the fruit it meditates on. I love how the narrator’s fascination with the fruit his grandmother calls “Amarillas” evolves over the course of the story ...
The Christening of the Fruit by Joseph Hernandez
Award Winners, Fiction, LAR Online
There is a hazy landscape separating memory and truth. “Certainty” lives in this space where even false memory can gain heft, if it is conjured long enough. Original in form, “Certainty” makes us wonder how we ...
Certainty by Renée Branum
Award Winners, LAR Online, Nonfiction
Red Hen loves myth and fairytale. We were built on the story of the Little Red Hen, so we fell madly in love with “And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon.” It’s got thrust and song of secrets and drama, the heft and ...
And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon by Debra A. Daniel
Award Winners, Fiction, LAR Online
Sometimes we are told that the shorter the poem, the stronger and more inventive the language must be. But what about the longer poem, the longer poem that thrives in an age of reduced attention and spectacular ...
I finally made it through the birds the birds by Samuel Ace
Award Winners, LAR Online, Poetry
Mine eyes are spent with weeping. —Lamentations 2:11
There is a basic question for all fiction: “What made you want to create this piece?” The judges found the winning entry answered this question with a ...
After Henry by Barbara Fried
Award Winners, Fiction, LAR Online
“Rupture” is an essay in which nothing extraordinary happens—children are born, are mothered, grow up, become independent. The author has the privilege of being home with her kids, and caring for them. It is all ...
Rupture by Kimberly Meyer
Award Winners, LAR Online, Nonfiction
Why did I select this poem? The speaker in “On Being Asked What Question I Don’t Want to Answer” dances with the darker themes of violence and despair with prowess, levity, and a wit that guards against the ...
On Being Asked What Question I Don’t Want to Answer by rebecca brown
Award Winners, LAR Online, Poetry
—But I’m not done with you, says the wife.
Highest marks go to this masterfully crafted piece. The surreal sorrow met by the wife is in such contrast to the apparent peace achieved by the husband, yet one ...
Heun-jeok by Aram Kim
Award Winners, Fiction, LAR Online