Awards

Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 LAR Literary Awards!

Poetry – Judged by Joshua Rivkin

Winner: “Ode to My Brother, My Dealer, and Instacart Workers in 2020.” by Haylee Millikan

Haylee Millikan is a poet, artist, and scholar originally from Spokane, Washington. Their poem “Final Crises” was shortlisted for the Spring 2022 poetry contest at Five South; other poems have been featured in Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, Digging Through the Fat, Susie magazine, pioneertown., zines by Off Menu Press, and elsewhere. Haylee lives in Long Beach, California, with her two Flatbush rescue cats and a chronic illness. Find them on Twitter and Instagram @hayleelujah or on their website, hmillikan.com.

First Runner-Up: ”After Imagism” by Xuela Zhang

Second Runner-Up: “Half Empty” by Isabela Garcia 

Short Fiction – Judged by Landon Houle

Winner: “Wedding Rice” by Joshua Levy

Joshua Levy writes in many genres (poetry, fiction, memoir, and graphic novel). He was recently the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Writer-In-Residence and appears often on CBC Radio and CBC Television. Levy’s work has been published by Oxford University Press, Vehicle Press, and Mansfield Press, and has appeared in such literary magazines as the Rumpus, Malahat Review, Maisonneuve, Vallum, the Puritan, Prairie Fire, Queen’s Quarterly, and Event.

First Runner-Up: “V.o.i.c-” by Kelly Chan

Flash Fiction – Judged by Thea Prieto

Winner: “Triptych: Little Deities” by Eliezra Schaffzin

Eliezra Schaffzin’s winning flash, “Triptych, Little Deities,” is included in her tiny collection of tiny stories, Tiny Creatures, which was selected as a 2022 finalist in the New Rivers Press Chapbook Contest and the Masters Review Chapbook Open. Schaffzin is a recipient of the Calvino Prize, awarded for a work of fabulist fiction. Her writing has also been recognized by the Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, the SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction, and the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, and has appeared in Conjunctions, PANK, the Harper Perennial Anthology Forty Stories, and other publications.

First Runner-Up: “Hyperboles” by Sarp Sozdinler

Second Runner-Up: “is: a history of my body” by Marina Blitshteyn

Creative Nonfiction – Judged by Chelsea Catherine

Winner: “Middle School” by Melinda Susan Goodman

Melinda Goodman is a poet who has been teaching at Hunter College since 1987 when Audre Lorde recommended her as her replacement. Goodman’s work has been published in mostly Queer journals and anthologies. She is a former coeditor of Conditions, the first international lesbian literary journal. She has received fellowships from Columbia University, the New York Foundation on the Arts, the Astraea Foundation, and the Key West Literary Seminar.

First Runner-Up: “Birdwatching in Oil Paintings”  by Leanne Ogasawara

Congratulations to the winners of the 2021 LAR Literary Awards!

Poetry – Judged by Francesca Bell 

Winner: “Out In It” by Nellie Le Beau

Nellie Le Beau’s debut poetry collection Inheritance (Puncher & Wattmann) will be published in late 2021. Nellie is a Bread Loaf Scholar and PhD candidate. www.nelebeau.com

First Runner-up: “After Star-Gazing” by Kiran Masroor

Second Runner-up: “Gaza” by Kiran Masroor

Short Fiction – Judged by Reema Rajbanshi

Winner: “Catalog” by Marilyn Abildskov

Marilyn Abildskov is the author of The Men in My Country. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa and is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and honors from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Djerassi Writing Residency, and the Utah Arts Council. Her essays and short stories have been published widely, most recently in Ploughshares, Sewanee Review, Crazyhorse, Southern Review, and Best American Essays. She teaches in the MFA Program at Saint Mary’s College of California and holds the 2021-22 Olivia Filippi Chair in Creative Writing.

First Runner-up: “Malecón” by Israel Muratalla

Second Runner-up: “Itch of Life” by Unni K. Nair

 Nonfiction – Judged by Beth Gilstrap

Winner: “Mammy Mary Says” by Lauren Foley

Lauren Foley (she/her) is Irish/Australian and bisexual. Her stories are published internationally. She has Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and is disabled; the majority of her writing is dictated. In 2016, her story “K-K-K” won the inaugural Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize with Overland Literary Journal and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year. She was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year in 2017 and nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Lauren was awarded a prestigious Next Generation Artist’s Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2018, and subsequent Artists’ bursaries. She is the recipient of two Varuna Fellowships, two Tyrone Guthrie Residencies and a Cill Rialaig Residency. Her creative nonfiction piece “I Don’t” is published in The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, ed. Sinéad Gleeson. Her debut short fiction collection, Polluted Sex, is forthcoming with Influx Press in 2022. Twitter: @foleywan_kenobi Website: laurenfoleywriter.com 

First Runner-up: “Name as Legal Fiction” by Peach Kander

Second Runner-up: “Ice Cream Math” by Dev Jannerson 

Flash Fiction – Judged by Lara Ehrlich

Winner: “Eight Arms to Hold You” by Leanne Dunic

Leanne Dunic is a biracial, bisexual woman who has spent her life navigating liminal spaces, inspiring her to produce trans-media projects such as To Love the Coming End (Book*hug/Chin Music Press 2017) and The Gift (Book*hug 2019). She is the fiction editor at Tahoma Literary Review and the leader of the band The Deep Cove. Her newest book is a lyric memoir with music entitled One and Half of You (Talonbooks 2021). She lives on the unceded and occupied traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. www.leannedunic.com

First Runner-up: “Shelter” by Ronit Plank 

Second Runner-up: “Talk Show” by Jamie Cooper

Congratulations to the winners and finalists of the 2020 LAR Literary Awards!

Short Fiction – Judged by Kristen Millares Young

Winner: “Marseille in Light” by An Yu

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing, and spent parts of her life studying and working in London, New York, Paris, and Hong Kong. She received her MFA from New York University. Her first novel, Braised Pork, was published in 2020 by Harvill Secker in the UK and Grove Atlantic in the US, and is forthcoming in six other languages worldwide. Her writing has appeared in the Sunday Times Style, Freeman’s, Literary Hub, among other publications. She lives in Hong Kong. Social media: anna_an_yu (Instagram), www.anyuwriting.com (website) .

First Runner-up: “Commute” by Gina Chung

Second Runner-up: “The Gravity of Rocks” by Jane Eaton Hamilton

Flash Fiction – Judged by Ellen Meeropol

Winner: “Put a Teat In It!” by Jennifer Lewis

Jennifer Lewis is the editor of Red Light Lit. Her short story, “New Low,” was the winner of the Nomadic Press Bindle Award in 2018. In June 2017, she was the first runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Creative Nonfiction Award for “Holy Communion.” Her fiction has been published in Cosmonaut’s Avenue, ENTROPY, Fourteen Hills Press, The Los Angeles Press, Midnight Breakfast, sPARKLE & bLINK, and X–R-A-Y Lit Mag. She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.

.First Runner-Up: “El Coyote” by Michael Sarabia

Second Runner-Up: “ways to disappear” by Tarah Knaresboro

Creative Nonfiction – Judged by Aimee Liu

Winner: “Graduate Studies in Hebrew” by Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author of seven books of nonfiction and poetry. Her most recent, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, was named “one of 9 essay collections feminists should read in 2020” (Bitch Media). Her first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, won the AWP award in creative nonfiction. Other books include Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, made into a Lifetime TV original movie; The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew; Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir; and, in poetry, If the Girl Never Learns. Her essays have won awards with Water~Stone Review, Mid-American Review, Hotel Amerika, and Blue Mesa Review. Sue’s media interviews include The View, Anderson Cooper 360, and PBS Books. She teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. www.SueWilliamSilverman

First Runner-up: “Notes Towards an Elegy” by Keegan Lawler

Second Runner-up: “Two Truths and a Lie” by Aruni Soni

Poetry – Judged by Francisco Aragón

Winner: “Thrift Store Fur” by Aimee Seu

Aimee Seu is the author of Velvet Hounds (forthcoming from Akron University Press, 2022), winner of the Akron University Poetry Prize. She graduated from the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing MFA in 2020 as a Poe/Faulkner Fellow where she was recipient of the 2019 Academy of American Poets Prize. Her other awards include the 2020 Henfield Prize for Fiction, the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize at Temple University, the Temple University 2016 William Van Wert Award and the Mills College Undergraduate Poetry Award. She was a semifinalist in the 2019 New Guard Vol. IX Knightville Poetry Contest judged by Richard Blanco. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Ninth Letter, Pleiades, BOAAT, Redivider, Raleigh Review, Diode, Minnesota Review, Blacklist, Adroit, Harpur Palate, and Runestone Magazine. She’s a Philadelphia native currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia.

First Runner-up: “Driving through Arizona to Peñasco/the Sonoran Desert” by Miguel Angel Garcia, Jr.

Second Runner-up: “Seismic Activities” by Michael Kleber-Diggs

Award winners each received $1,000, and their works will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Los Angeles Review. The awards are given annually for works of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction.