Passages North's nonfiction contest winners announced!

Congratulations to the winners of Passages North’s 2013 Thomas Hrushka Memorial Nonfiction Prize! Contest judge Elena Passarello has selected the as the winner Brandon Davis Jennings' essay, "I Am the Pulverizer." She named two honorable mentions: Christiana Langenberg's "Foiled" and Sidony O'Neal's "Timely Reflections on the Death of Emergency."

Here’s what Elena had to say about the winning essay:

"I Am the Pulverizer"is a very funny, very crafty essay that I selected because it is alive on so many levels. For one, the language thrums with life; it spits and snarks and sucks you into the scenes it depicts. The speaker, too is an alive and challenging presence on the page; at some places he even takes us into a "live-chat" inside his head. And, perhaps most important of all, the piece is alive essayistically. The ideas inside it--about the dug-in heels of our histories, the goofiness of pugilism, and the nebulous menace of truth and storytelling--are developed, rather than simply arranged or presented, with the reader. The essay is right there with us as we unpack it--asking questions and pulling out rugs from underneath its own structure. So I say a lively BRAVO! to this live-action bout of ideas, voice, and scene.

Brandon Davis Jennings is an Iraq War veteran from West Virginia. He received his MFA in Fiction from Bowling Green State University and is currently an English PhD candidate at Western Michigan University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review,Monkeybicycle, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. His chapbook Waiting for the Enemy was Iron Horse Literary Review’s Single Author Chapbook Competition winner for 2012.

The winning essays will be published in Issue 35 of Passages North, due out next winter. Thanks to all who entered! (And keep an eye out here for an announcement on the winners of this year's Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, coming soon.)