We feel fine. Really. We survived AWP, and I believe many other attendees did as well. I have never seen so many guys in bathrooms washing their hands for the scientifically acceptable amount of time. One guy was actually singing Happy Birthday. I think we will all be fine.
It was a pleasure to see so many of our contributors, make new friends, and convert lots of poets to flash fiction.
We gave the bookfair attendees a challenge this year. We asked them to bring a piece of micro fiction (400 words or fewer) to the SmokeLong table by Friday afternoon, and so many did. We had tons of entries and also many really good stories. Thank you to everyone who spent some time last week drafting micro fiction.
The winner of our AWP micro fiction competition is Tom C. Hunley for his micro “Questions for Further Study.” We chose the story for its innovative style, compression, and stunning work at the sentence level. And we handed him $200.
We had so many good stories that we decided to award two runners-up. We loved “The Whale” by Jane Wagar and “A Girl Whose Name is Poetry” by Audrey Bauman. Congratulations, to you both!
See you in Kansas City!
