Contest

We look forward to announcing the 2024 EROTIC contest winners soon. Judged by Bojan Louis (fiction), Margo Steines (nonfiction), and Stephanie Cawley (poetry), the contest received amazing submissions and we’re grateful to share the winning pieces.

Last year, The Council of Maggies (Maggie Nelson, Shipstead and Smith) judged Sonora Review‘s 2023 MERCY Contest. Read more about the results below.

2023 WINNERS 

Jordan Hamel, “How to give a lecture on how to eat an elephant”

  • On Hamel’s poem, judge Maggie Smith writes, “I admire so many things about this poem, which speaks to self-mercy and self-compassion in ways both playful and devastating. I admire how this writer has transformed well-worn ideas and made them new here; the metaphor of the elephant in the room is interwoven with the familiar saying about how to eat an elephant, bringing us to the unforgettable last line: ‘There are so many rooms I’ve made a meal of.’ I gasped.”

Kathryn Campo Bowen, “Pamplona”

  • On Bowen’s story, judge Maggie Shipstead writes, “I admired how structural and technical choices added depth and resonance to the storytelling within this brief, affecting piece. The reader peers out from the maze-like confinement of a mind in decline and then, through an adroit shift in point of view, is resituated in a larger world, on the outside looking in, which feels both like a liberation and a loss.”

Kristi D. Osorio, “Split Ends”

  • On Osorio’s essay, judge Maggie Nelson writes, “From its fraught lede on, ‘Split Ends’ kept me riveted. I admire its dark and wry tone, its attention to detail, its nimble leaps in time, its sure-footed narrative voice, and its potent portrait of a relation impossible to live with or leave behind.”

FINALISTS

  • Divya Maniar, “Age of Indifference”
  • Gaven Lover, “TO SEE HER GO”
  • Ali Bryan, “Doe”
  • Marilyn Abildskov, “The Body Asks Its Questions”
  • Tamara Panici, “Four Auto-Vignettes”
  • Jo O’Lone-Hahn, “Cicada (for S., H., S. & C.)”