New Canadians – First Place   On October 20, 1954, my mother and I boarded the ocean liner, Vulcania, from the port of Genoa, Italy. As I was very young, (almost 4 years old), the enormity of this trip did not fully register. However, I do have some recollections of the journey. I remember waving to my Nonno from the deck of the ship and my Mom crying, not knowing what this phase of our live would bring. I cried too, as the little white handkerchief that I was waving slipped out of my hands, and drifted slowly down into the water. The journey took 13 days, and the seas were rough. Mom did not have a good experience as she suffered from seasickness. I, however, was fine. One of the other passengers would take me to dining room for meals, and ensured that I was entertained. On November 4, the liner arrived at the port of Halifax, N.S. I distinctly remember wet snow, a new experience for me, was falling as we entered a …

  Adult New Canadian – First Place Foreword: I met the old man only once, almost 30 years ago. But his words of compassion and wisdom spoken to me in a heart-breaking situation changed my awareness of life forever. My gratitude for his gift is still present; just as much as my shame not even to have thanked him.   …And About Dreams, Farewells…   The first years of my life my family lived in a bombed-out city in post-WWII Germany. We resided in a wet, cold ruin with a shared smelly outhouse in the yard. Rain constantly dripping through the ceiling was the only running water source. However, playing in the remains of the destroyed chaos was always an adventure for us kids, scary, when we ran into traumatized adults and stranded hobos in rags and old army garment, all former rank badges carefully removed. They hunkered down in whatever shelter they found and either tried to chase us away or draw us near. Exciting, when we played WAR, the only game we knew. …

Youth – First Place   “My time’s run out,” Queen Isdron says. The dying woman is ashen, her voice steel. “Tomorrow you will be Queen.” Although this frozen statue has raised me since childhood, her looming death doesn’t inspire grief in me. She’s a hard woman, feared throughout her land of ice. She summoned me here tonight with a final message. At dawn, the Prophets will perform the Death Ceremony. They will cut Queen Isdron’s hair to strip away her power. “Come,” Queen Isdron commands. I lean down so my lips almost brush her clammy forehead. She extends a hand smelling of rot and digs fingernails into my neck. They’ll leave crescent-shaped bruises to match the ones on my forearms and back from days past. My face remains impassive, just as Queen Isdron taught me. “I made you strong,” she whispers. “I transformed a weak Veikur Skinner’s daughter into a Queen. You can’t fail.” I nod. Sick as she is, the terror evoked by the sight of her is only slightly less potent than usual. …

Adult Personal Non-Fiction – First Place     I do not iron. My mother, however, approached this chore in a unique and careful way, which was startling in such a chaotic, tumbledown house of five children of all ages. She, who was usually so free in all things, had three strict rules. One: she always worked in front of the T.V. in the living room. Two: she only devoted an hour a week to the task. Three: the family must be still and had to stay at least three feet away from the ironing board probably because of our usual rough housing every minute of every day. She broke these rules only once. * December 1959. Saturday afternoon. When I was seven years old the Christmas heavens opened without warning, gifting me an hour alone with my mother. Carols blasted from the transistor radio in the kitchen. Baking shortbread filled the house with the smell of hot sugar and butter. Rolled dough waited on the floured table to be cookie-cut into shapes. The combined oven …

Adult Personal Non-Fiction – Second Place     It’s New Year’s Eve and I begin my annual ritual.  I conceal my daddy’s shotgun between the mattress and box spring of my bed, and gather my tiny brother and young sister to curl up with me on the lumpy hiding place.  I tell them stories about Snoopy and talking chipmunks and flying elephants until they fall asleep.  I squeeze out of the middle of my huddled siblings, tuck the blanket up to their chins, sit on the bean bag chair in the corner, and wait.  Wait in the dark until he comes home.  Wait for the New Year to begin. I know tonight will be a replay of the last 2 drunken end-of -year celebrations.   I wait for the inevitable return of my denigrated mother and my self- loathing father, when the bars close and their friends can’t sustain the party.  They will come home and fight.  It’s always a one-sided fight, with my father hurling insults and accusations at my mother, and her frightened denials. …

Adult Fiction – Second Place    Paul awoke at 2:49 am fresh from the dream; not a dream, the dream. The same dream that had struck every night since he and his wife, Karen, had opened their boutique hotel in the Slocan valley. In his dream, Paul had moved out of a house where he had lived for a long time. The purchaser takes up residence and Paul’s life takes a bad turn. Invariably, he would remember a dead body buried or hidden somewhere on his old property. Sometimes the body was dry and shrivelled as if plundered from an antiquities museum. Other nights it was tumefied as if freshly plucked from a swamp. On some nights, the body was found in the flower bed beneath the picture window flanking the front door.  Tonight, the new owner had decided to install a new bathroom in the basement and had discovered the desiccated corpse when he jack hammered the concrete floor for the rough-in. Most nights in his dream, by act or omission, Paul was somehow …

Adult Fiction Submissions – First Place   Well, I know which came first of course. Black Bart…wait, was it?  I think so. The time frame is helter-skelter concerning my initial acquaintance with the divine Ms. van Hellemonde though. Curse her. Was it at the cafe outside the Gare du Nord on a crisply invigorating spring day, the crowds rushing past under an ambivalent pellucid sky potentially promising to deliver rain but at the moment lazy, corpulent and unhurried? Where she batted her dark-lidded eyes in languid reply to my poorly timed and rather insipid “An American in Paris, then?” Channeling Fitzgerald or Hemingway or even Gertrude Stein. Or was it in the garish neon reflecting from the puddles outside the hidden door of the stumbled-on jazz club on Dunkirken Street, deep in the less-traveled sections of Glasgow’s red-light district sharing a sodden overhead newspaper and damp cigarettes as the drops conspired to put our heads together collectively gulping the fiendish nicotine? The latter I think. My European trip was hastily conceived and poorly executed, a …

Sing me a song I know I want to remember my past so in that far off dream when our futures cross I will remember Say to me now the words I long to hear speak them softly for I’ve been listening since the first day of my birth I heard you in some far off dream I can’t remember when but if our futures cross I will remember When all life is gone and the present is the past our future will be a thought that no one remembers.