Best of the Net 2019  



2019 FINALISTS


FICTION

  • Meghan Callahan's "Fish Girls" from Redivider
  • Roxane Gay's "Boy in a Coma" from Wigleaf
  • Rosemary Harp's "The Widows Club" from Pithead Chapel
  • Karin Lin-Greenberg's "Unboxing" from Memorious: A Journal of New Verse and Fiction
  • K.C. Mead-Brewer's "The Hunted" from The Cincinnati Review
  • Claire Robbins's "Two Stars, Burning Sun" from The Boiler
  • AshleyRose Sullivan's "Town | nwoT" from Still: The Journal
  • John Tavares's "Toronto Life" from The Account
  • Zach VandeZande's "Allies" from The Baltimore Review

    NONFICTION

  • Krys Malcolm Belc's "The Machine" from Redivider
  • Jerri Bell's "Wrongful Appropriation of the Soul" from Wrath-Bearing Tree
  • Brian Broome's "Mischief" from Coal Hill Review
  • Andrés Cerpa's "Therefore" from Ploughshares
  • Katherine Crocker's "Híyoge owísisi tánga itá (Cricket egg stories)" from carte blanche
  • Erica Dawson's "My Dream about Loving White" from The Rumpus
  • Carolyn Dekker's "October: Pomegranates" from Up North Lit
  • Anne Falkowski's "Compound Presentation" from Pithead Chapel
  • Gaby Garcia's "The Poetry of Periods" from North American Review
  • Ceridwen Hall's "Network" from TriQuarterly
  • Christine Hume's "The Unregistered: Glances Toward and Away" from [PANK]
  • Naira Kuzmich's "The Bargain-Shopper" from The Adroit Journal
  • Tracey Lien's "My Country" from The Penn Review
  • Kate Osana Simonian's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Stalker" from Shenandoah
  • Amber D. Tran's "Elephant Speak" from Pithead Chapel
  • Annie Trinh's "Child Listen to Us" from Emrys Journal
  • Divya Victor's "Sugar on the Gash" from Asian American Writers' Workshop
  • Karolina Zapal's "czerń" from A Velvet Giant

    POETRY

  • Sarah Alcaide-Escue's "Afterbirth" from Bear Review
  • Lauren K. Alleyne's "Self Portrait with Burning Crosses" from Porter House Review
  • John Amen's "Legacy" from American Literary Review
  • Madhur Anand's "BRAIN HEMORRHAGE, EARLY FALL" from Palette Poetry
  • E. Kristin Anderson's "Find an Answer in Floorboards or Flowers" from Ninth Letter
  • makalani bandele's "tune as an asylum" from Third Point Press
  • Daisy Bassen's "Last Shot" from Midway Journal
  • Rishee Batra's "Why They Wore Orange" from Nashville Review
  • Ruth Bavetta's "A Murder" from As It Ought To Be Magazine
  • Tasmin Blaxter's "Autogynephile" from Menacing Hedge
  • Emma Bolden's "In the Springtime of Her Voodoo" from Glass: A Journal of Poetry
  • Alison Moncrief Bromage's "Osprey Shadow" from {PANK]
  • Mahogany Browne's "excerpt from 'Nation Induced Disorder'" from Split This Rock
  • Clara Burghelea's "Mirage" from The Citron Review
  • Jody Chan's "the podcast defines nostalgia" from Homology Lit
  • George David Clark's "Still Life" from THRUSH
  • Alexandra Corinth's "Language Barriers" from Kissing Dynamite
  • Kwame Dawes's "Bones in the Soil" from Blackbird
  • Ajanae Dawkins's "On Classrooms and Ghosts" from Tinderbox Poetry
  • Gregory Emilio's "Saying Grace in a Time of Too Much (Elegy for a Future Loss)" from Nashville Review
  • Kerry James Evans's "Escape to Melita" from Apple Valley Review
  • Cass Francis's "Second" from Drunk Monkeys
  • Hafizah Geter's "My Brother-in-law Recites the Takbir" from The Rumpus
  • Iskandar Haggarty's "walter's advice to walter before the thorns set in" from honey & lime lit
  • David Hur's "a minor variation off Year of the Ox" from deLuge
  • Naomie Jean-Pierre's "The Apologetics for Little Girls" from K'in
  • Genevieve Jencson's "Self-Sharpening" from Sidereal Magazine
  • Kaylee Jeong's "Intercession Prayer" from Hyphen
  • Dylon Jones's "The Boxers I Sniffed in a Boy's Bathroom in Middle School" from Redivider
  • Rukmini Kalamangalam's "immigrant song" from Jet Fuel Review
  • Umang Kalra's "Love in the Diaspora" from The Hellebore
  • C. Kubasta's "indelible in the hippocampus" from Memoir Mixtapes
  • Quraysh Ali Lansana's "recipe for a massacre: tulsa 1921" from Pine Hills Review
  • Sarah Lao's "Spring" from Canvas Teen Literary Journal
  • Lisa Lopez-Smith's "White Privilege at the Route 286 Border Patrol Checkpoint" from Rise Up Review
  • Lorette C. Luzajic's "Fresh Strawberries" from KYSO Flash
  • Kwoya Maples's "Flash of Sister Shannon and Brother Jared" from The Summerset Review
  • Neha Maqsod's "I Want You to Say My Name" from Royal Rose Magazine
  • Sharon F. McDermott's "Crows in Wind" from Eclectica
  • Brandon Melendez's "Shouts to Scene Kids" from Passages North
  • Megan Merchant's "Forget-me-nots" from Breakwater Review
  • Mark Mordue's "Old Ways" from [self-published]
  • Jessica Morey-Collins's "Letters From Our Future Selves" from Sundog Lit
  • Sean Patrick Mulroy's "Villanelle for the Wound" from Winning Writers
  • Romeo Oriogun's "What the World Won't Show Us" from Up the Staircase Quarterly
  • Martin Ott's "Bird Nests Used to Look More Like Fortresses" from Press 53
  • Fiona Perry's "Moon" from Bold + Italic
  • Kevin Phan's "[Everything's just one insight]" from Quarterly West
  • Meghan Phillips's "It's Me, the Girlfriend from the First Part of a Rom-Co—You Know, the One the Guy Leaves for the Girl the Movie's Really About—And These Are My Crimes" from Drunk Monkeys
  • Diana Pinckney's "Guernica Triptych" from Press 53
  • Alycia Pirmohamed's "How We Begin" from Tinderbox Poetry
  • Jessica Poli's "Red Ocher" from Hot Metal Bridge
  • Kathy Z. Price's "Mercado de Sabado por la Noche; Con Barbie Negra como Plato de Entrada" from The Cincinnati Review
  • Esther Ra's "self-portrait as alice in wonderland" from Exposition Review
  • henry 7. reneau, jr.'s "1 Blues tha Rain, 40 Days & 40 Nights" from cahoodaloodaling
  • Lisa Rhoades's "Windfall" from Press 53
  • Ron Riekki's "My Son Finds a Dead Bird" from Border Crossing
  • Jess Rizkallah's "At Beiteddine, Summer 2018" from Vagabond City Lit
  • Raquel Salas Rivera's "desahucio / eviction" from Split This Rock
  • Joel Salcido's "Portrait of Brother Encased in Concrete" from pidgeonholes
  • Veronica Sandoval's "There are Cholas" from Blood Orange Review
  • Clint Smith's "When people say, 'we have made it through worse before'" from wildness
  • Pablo Piñero Stillmann's "Tiny Tornado Spotted in Effingham" from The Summerset Review
  • Teresa Sutton's "Confiteor 1" from The Coil
  • Pamela Taylor's "The Atlantic Ocean Recalls the Middle Passage" from Atlas and Alice Literary Magazine
  • Samantha Tetangco's "I Never Talk About the Blood" from Contrary Magazine
  • Taylor Triplett's "The Barbershop" from Screen Door Review
  • Denzel Xavier Scott's "Burying Blackberry with Nightshade" from decomP magazinE
  • Natalie Wee's "When my grandmother begins to forget" from Ninth Letter
  • Patrick Williams's "Chic Cheer" from Memoir Mixtapes
  • Spencer William's "Self Portrait of Boy With Ocean, photograph (2005)" from A Velvet Giant
  • Yanyi's "Blessing" from Glass: A Journal of Poetry
  • Kiani Yiu's "I Am Always Thinking of Exposed Skin" from Porter House Review


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