Now in its seventh year, the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction gives us cause for bittersweet celebration; established in memory of Liza Nelligan—a classmate, student, teacher, colleague, and friend of many here in the English Department at Colorado State—it reminds us of our loss. But by honoring her passion for literary fiction through this prize, we have the opportunity each fall to feature and celebrate the work of an outstanding short story writer. This year’s winner is Katherine Hill, for her funny, beautiful, and haunting story of grief, purgation, and conflagration, “Waste Management,” selected by final judge Andrea Barrett. Joining the fiction section are Laurie Ann Cedilnik, with “The Hottest Part of the Summer,” concerning a man who must find a way to draw his wife and daughter out of their self-absorption as he faces an impending crisis, and Matthew Baker, with “Wink Wink Kiss Kiss,” a rich and near Gothic story in which a girl and her brother construct a deeply imaginative world to buffer themselves from the traumas of their chaotic family life.

Among this issue’s nonfiction, we present Barrett Hathcock’s “Goodbye, Arkansas,” a reflective piece on the pleasures and perils of meditative driving; Barrington Smith-Seetachitt’s “Luck, Statistics, Magic,” an examination of how to interpret and cope with the language, logic, and math of illness; and Peggy Shinner’s “Leopold and Shinner,” an essay that traces the origins of a letter to Shinner’s mother from one of the most infamous criminals of the twentieth century, raising compelling questions about crime, celebrity, rehabilitation, sexuality, and family.

As always, we hope you find much that speaks to you in these pages. Welcome to the fall issue.

Cover photo by Dustin Farnum.

Featured in This Issue

Kazim Ali, Rae Armantrout, Matthew Baker, Emily J. Benson, Tom Bourguignon, Laurie Ann Cedilnik, Mary Crow, Alexander Dickow, Henri Droguet, CJ Evans, Dustin Farnum, Matthew Gagnon, Karen Garthe, Piotr Gwiazda, Barrett Hathcock, Virginia Heatter, Jenny Gropp Hess, Katherine Hill, Brenda Iijima, Andrew Joron, Michael Kelleher, Karla Kelsey, John Kinsella, Enrique Lihn, Christopher Lirette, Dawn Lonsinger, Charles Malone, Thomas Meyer, Laura Mullen, Brian Nicolet, Kristin Prevallet, Matt Reeck, Peggy Shinner, John Shoptaw, Dale Smith, Barrington Smith-Seetachitt, Jon Thompson, Jonathan Williams, Grzegorz Wróblewski

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