During the summer, South 85 Journal relaunched Converse College’s Julia Peterkin Awards with a flash fiction contest, and we are excited to announce the results.

Julia Peterkin Award for Flash Fiction

“What You Said” by Natalie Troy

Natalie Troy lives near a beautiful lake in the wilds of northern New Jersey where she recently completed her first novel. Her short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Firewords Magazine and Montana Mouthful. Connect with her on Twitter @_natalietroy.

Runners Up
(Listed by Title in Alphabetical Order)

“Dump Columbus” by Charlie Watts

Charlie Watts earned an MFA from Brown University in 1992. After a long detour through communications consulting, Charlie returned to writing in 2013 and has published in journals including Carve, Narrative, Storm Cellar, and Sequestrum. His story, “Arrangements,” won the 2015 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. He and his wife, a chaplain, have three grown children and live in Freedom, New Hampshire.

“Eric Clapton’s Girlfriend” by John Mattson

John Mattson is a writer, screenwriter, songwriter, and teacher. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son. His bio is incomplete.

“Fiesta” by Kathleen Wheaton

Kathleen Wheaton lived and worked as a journalist in Spain, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Her fiction has appeared in many journals; her collection, Aliens and Other Stories, won the Washington Writers Publishing House Fiction Prize. She is at work on a novel about the dictatorship in Argentina.

“Mark 12:31” by D. Nolan Jefferson

D. Nolan Jefferson is a librarian and  writer based in Washington, DC. A California native, he has earned an MFA in Film from Art Center College of Design and a MLIS from Louisiana State University. Pursuing an MFA in fiction at American University, he won the 2017 AWP Intro Journals Project Award, has been published in Tahoma Literary Review and Red Savina Review and enjoys tacos, records, and fellow introverts.

Get excited about reading these amazing stories in our Fall / Winter issue, which we will release December 15, 2018. Also, because we received so many awesome stories in our contest, we will publish a few other entries in our blog before the release of our issue. We look forward to sharing this work with you!

In the meantime, you can continue to submit longer fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art for our upcoming issue through November 1 at https://south85.submittable.com/submit.

Thank you for your continued readership and support!