Our Short Story Competition Winners Feature Sex And Santería, The Devil Himself . . . And Some Cannibals With Artistic Tastes
We’ve selected three fine short stories as the winner and two honorable mentions in the Summer 2021 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition. Accompanied by original illustrations from artist Andy Paciorek, all are now available for your reading pleasure right here.
In addition, these three pieces will also be included in our print anthology, 21st Century Ghost Stories: Volume II, due out from Wyrd Harvest Press (Durham, U.K.) in September. Cheers.
Our Summer 2021 Supernatural Fiction Award competition deadline has come and gone, and here at TGS, we’re reading like crazy. And on June 21, we will both announce and publish the winner and two honorable mentions.
Not only will all three stories be published, with illustrations, on our website, but they will also be included in our print anthology, 21st Century Ghost Stories—Volume II, which is due out from Wyrd Harvest Press (Durham, U.K.) early this fall.
It’s always an exciting time when we reveal the winners of one of our contests—but because the anthology only comes out every three years, this is an especially thrilling time for us.
If you submitted a story to the contest, you’ll be hearing from us soon. Everyone else . . . you’ve got some great reading coming in the near future.
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition was an American sweep this time around. “Straw Dogs,” by American writer Mona Susan Power, is the Screw Turn winner for 2021. Our honorable mention winners are Scott Duncan, of California, for his story, “Wake Up Gringo,” and Marie Raven, an American living in Norway, for “Here Be.”
Each year, The Screw Turn contest awards publication and cash prizes for excellence in supernatural fiction of under 1,000 words. For your reading enjoyment, all three stories are posted below, as well as on the Screw Turn Story Page.
Meanwhile, our contest for full-length supernatural short stories of up to 10,000 words, The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award, opens for submissions on February 15, with a deadline of April 30. If you’re a writer of supernatural fiction, have a look at our competition guidelines.
WINNER, 2021
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY MONA SUSAN POWER
You have no one to blame but yourself. But you’ve been surviving on graduate student wages, convinced you’ll toil in obscurity forever. You’re not a star in the Anthropology Department. Frankly, there isn’t room for another star. Certainly not for the first Native American woman ever admitted to this famous university’s prestigious program.
You like to think you honor your ancestors—one wall of your studio apartment is covered with photographs of them, radiating from the central portrait of your great-grandfather and his eternal stare. You’re convinced he’s watching you, perhaps proud of you as you bend over your reading. One night when you treat yourself to a tumbler of quality bourbon—a gift from Dr. Mason, the Department Chair who often says that he “believes in you”—a blur of movement from the wall of photos catches your eye. You stand up to investigate, peering into faces of men and women long dead, the ones responsible for your being here. Your great-grandfather sits tall, his posture grand but at ease. Unlike you, he is comfortable in his skin. A blanket drapes over one arm and hand, and he holds a war club in the other. You know he would kill to protect you. He kept your band together in hard times. He maintained spiritual practices that existed before the time of Jesus. His stare makes you uneasy, so you glance away for a second. There it is again, the blur of movement. Your ancestors are restless.
* * *
You’ve had too much to drink at the Departmental Christmas party. You begin telling stories. How your parents and younger brother, Martin, were killed on a foggy night in Wisconsin while headed to Oneida for the annual powwow. Truck driver fell asleep and drifted across the median, slamming head on into your family’s car. State troopers forbade you from viewing their bodies, saying the carnage would be too much. And you understood what they meant after Martin visited you in a dream the next night, pushing his tortoise-shell glasses up the bridge of his nose in that gesture you found endearing—such a solemn nine-year-old—and his face slid away, revealing glistening bone. You were about to crumple in horror when his face came back, and he mouthed the word, “Sorry,” like it was his fault he was dead. [continue reading…]
Volume II of our print anthology, “21st Century Ghost Stories,” has just been published. It contains all of our Summer 2018 to Summer 2021 winning and honorable mention stories from The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest and The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition—30 fine supernatural short stories in all!
