First, we thank the many hundreds of fine writers who submitted to our 2026 Fiction Contest.
And we send deep gratitude to Jessica Treadway, our final judge. Jessica has published four novels and four story collections, including I Felt my Life with Both my Hands, to be published in April 2026. We thank her for choosing the winner of the $1000 Fiction Prize, and the runner-up from among our five finalists.
These stories exemplify the wide range of our outreach from British Columbia to London to Africa, from LA to the Pacific Northwest to New England. They also show diversity of styles, ranging from realistic to more experimental. And their subject matter is diverse as they tell of love and loss, ambition and rebellion, violence and healing, veering from the existential to the absurd to the rapturous.
FICTION WINNER: JEFFREY MICHAEL KANE
“Say it Right” explores the power dynamics among parents and children, brothers and sisters, in the wake of a death, asking who gets to tell—or rewrite—the story. “By the time I found the start of a sentence, he was already telling another, and everyone was already nodding, and the moment for truth—whatever minor truth I thought I was defending—had dressed itself quietly and left the room,” the narrator recalls of his brother.
RUNNER-UP: PIPER FRANCKUM
In contrast, “The Lottery” delves into the consequences of winning it all, depicting the quiet desperation of day-to-day life without a direction. “The expectation of nothing is essential to the character of a lottery winner,” the narrator muses. “Lottery winners are careless, detached, and typically unlucky in life right up to the point they scratch that winning ticket.”
FINALISTS:
“How to Beat Your Face on a Budget Before and After He Leaves you for the Twink at the Club” by ELISA GARCIA. What a romp of a searing, moving story is this tale of a drag queen preparing for her big moment on the stage, humor meets lyricism meets compassion. “Give the moisture a minute to set, humming to Cardi B, fancying yourself a bodega baddie, before smearing Pixi brand primer on the sleep creases lining your face. Marvel at the porcelain smoothness of the skin beneath the faded pockmarks where your tears tend to pool before spilling.”
“The Yellow Kitchen,” by JESSICA DALY experiments with plot and structure, yet with a realistic base. In lyrical language this story depicts the grief of a woman left by her lover, only to communicate with the ex-lover’s dead grandmother. “Then and now, I fall asleep feeling like the Earth had reversed its rotation and changed everything eternally. Grocery stores now riddled with shelves of food foaming with mold, streetlights flashing cornflower blue.”
“Empties” by TARA DUGAN measures a life in beer bottles, painting a portrait of a flawed father as seen by his son, meditating on memory and grief. “As the bottles made themselves at home on Clifton, they made the house a fragile one,” the son reflects. “Every room rattled if you walked through it too decisively; every nerve was fragile, going from solid to fractured after a single mistake, no grace or give in between.”
EDITORS’ PICKS: We also thank the fine authors of our Editors’ Picks, stories of such high quality that the Solstice Editors felt moved to publish them.
“Crashing Out” by TUNDE OYEBODE reveals the anger beneath a highly educated African’s alienation while living and loving in London.
“At 70” by IAN M. RANDALL tells the tale of a widower desperately, yet ironically, seeking ways to relieve his loneliness.
“Bonesters on Holiday” by TAMARA SELLMAN whisks us from a New Age shop into an enchanting realm, bringing us face to face with an unexpected kind of otherness, stripping away what’s unnecessary—sometimes literally—for connection.
“Butterfly Eyes” by DAR THOMAS is an intimate meditation on memory, grief, and daughterhood, a portrait of a virtuous mother, of what life can really be like under the rule of a saint.
Deep thanks to the literary insights of our READERS of many years, David Sahl and Heather Labay, and to our new readers Ona Anasike and Mia Karvonides. Their avid, professional involvement was key.
Publishing and promoting the array of diverse talent in this contest is one of the joys of being an editor, even during difficult times.
Lee Hope, Founder, Fiction Editor
Monica Jimenez, Assistant Fiction Editor
Monica Jimenez is the senior culture & trends editor for Tufts University news and features and assistant editor of Tufts Magazine, and a community ed acting and playwriting instructor. Her work has appeared in publications including Ruminate Magazine and the Mini Plays Review, and her plays have been produced in festivals including the Boston Theater Marathon, Boston Slam Theater, and Short ’N Sweet Hollywood. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program and former co-editor-in-chief, fiction editor, and designer of the Stonecoast Review. She was an honorable mention for Ruminate Magazine’s William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and winner of the flash fiction contest at the Boskone sci-fi and fantasy convention.
Lee Hope, is the author of the novel Horsefever, a finalist in the Midwest Book Awards. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship for Fiction. She has published stories in numerous literary journals such as Witness and The North American Review. She founded and directed a low-residency MFA program and has taught at various universities. She also teaches for Changing Lives Through Literature, which serves people on probation and parole.
