The Winners of the 2022 Spring Contest
The Editors
Columbia Journal is excited to announce the winners and finalists of our 2022 Spring Contest, which was judged by Garielle Lutz, Aaron Coleman, Colleen Kinder, and Natasha Rao. We want to thank everyone who entered the contest for sharing their work with us, as well as our four wonderful judges, and express our congratulations to the winners and finalists.
Poetry
Judged by Natasha Rao
Winner: “Owed to My Father’s Accent,” by Ally Ang
Finalists: “What It Means When a Man Tells You to Call His Name” by Joshua Effiong and “Can Your Colonizer’s Country Give You PTSD?” by Neha Maqsood
Natasha Rao on the winner: “;Owed to My Father’s Accent’ is a deft, musical exploration of familial intimacies and lineage. I was particularly struck by Ang’s dynamic enjambment throughout the poem, as she quickly moves us through a series of finely-wrought, resonant images.”
Nonfiction
Judged by Colleen Kinder
Winner: “Learning to Play” by Lizzie Roberts
Finalists: “Rippling Lines” by Bridget Lyons and “Widowing” by Paige Thomas
Colleen Kinder on the winner: “I was enchanted by the voice of ‘Learning to Play’ from the very first line. An essay about seizing confidence as much as about learning music, this story plunges readers into a gripping and nuanced journey with the piano, laced with decades of family history and fueled by the kind of emotional honesty that sharpens the way we look at ourselves.”
Fiction
Judged by Garielle Lutz
Winner: “Eel Bait” by Francesca McDonnell Capossela
Finalists: “Marquee Days” by Cian Mc Court and “Hazards” by TJ Fuller
Garielle Lutz on the winner: “‘Eel Bait’ is a quiet but walloping story about emotional desolation in the wake of a traumatic loss. I admire the line-by-line exactitude, the spare, low-key lyricism, the perfect pitch of the dialogue, the subtle persuasiveness of the narrative voice–in short, the alluring sureness of the artistry throughout. The story is written with a remarkable restraint that bespeaks a deep and unnerving knowledge of people and of life.”
Translation
Judged by Aaron Coleman
Winner: “Seven Poems” by Chen Xianfa, translated by Martyn Crucefix and Nancy Feng Liang
Finalists: “A Body” by Catalina Infante Beovic, translated by Michelle Mirabella and “The Most Beautiful Animal in the World” by José J. Veiga, translated by Thomas Mira y Lopez
Aaron Coleman on the winner:” In ‘Seven Poems,’ plainspoken music and poignant imagery breathe another life into the translated poems of Chen Xianfa. Concise lines resound: “In the bottle, ink is blue as autumn” in the poem “A Remote Sky” and “a faint tearing sound –/the last threads of water falling” in the poem “On an Old Envelope” establish a mode of perception deeply committed to both seeing and feeling the world. In this sequence of seven, that commitment to seeing and feeling is ever-interwoven with political and familial stakes that haunt how these poems move. In “From the window of a prison,” tonal and emotional resonances teeter between the melancholy and the ominous as the speaker states, “My interviews did not go well.” This poetic voice expands as the poems constellate, encompassing images that push past what seemed unthinkable just moments before: “The dangerous boa-constrictor still hides in the most exquisite chandelier.” Uh, what? Yes. Somehow the poems earn their audacity. By the end of this sequence I’m convinced, as go the final lines of the poem “Tremor in the Dust,” that yes, “now it’s time for the cricket to express them/in a different language.”
