Congratulations 2023 1st Place Winners

Poetry – Selected by A. Van Jordan
A Catalogue of Celebrities Seen While Working at the Restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel — Claudia Crook

Nonfiction – Selected by Melissa Febos
Everything I Love Is Out to Sea — Brooke Shaffner

Fiction – Selected by Bryn Chancellor
The Bridge — Melisssa Scott Sinclair

Congratulations to All Winners, Finalists & Semi-finalists

POETRY

1st Place: A Catalogue of Celebrities Seen While Working at the Restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel — Claudia Crook
2nd Place: I’m Tuning in Live from the Way Out — Marcus Wicker
3rd Place: The Stars Align Themselves in Ancient Sisterhoods of Light — Rhett Iseman Trull

Additional Finalists:

A Pinch of Gray Fluff — Kenneth Chamlee
Birds Speak to the Women in My Family — Arielle Hebert
Clemency — Angelina Oberdan Brooks
In Spite of My Anger — Anita Cantillo
It occurs to me now — J. Joseph Kane
Kingdom — Katherine Soniat
Parable of the Foolish Virgins Revised — Joanne Durham

Semi-finalists:

Abscission — Bill Griffin
Anna’s Bible — Elisabeth Murawski
Catechism — Janet Ford
Echo — Angelina Oberdan Brooks
Family History — Tess Congo
For Angel Island — Susan L. Lin
If I Love You, I Will Roast You a Chicken — Claudia Crook
Loving v. Virginia — Leslie Williams
Of Rock Doves — Paul Jones
Only Daughter in a House of Sons — Maureen Sherbondy
Queens and Kin — Arielle Hebert
Reef — Terry Hall Bodine
Telemachus Ponders the Bottomland — Katherine Soniat
The general tends his olive trees in the middle of a memoir I am writing — Fred Pond
The Holy Ghost in Thalia’s Closet — Elizabeth Cranford Garcia
Vessel — Susan Alff
When the Universe Told Me You Were Dead — Anita Cantillo

NONFICTION

1st Place: Everything I Love Is Out to Sea — Brooke Shaffner
2nd Place: An Herbarium — Heather Hahn
3rd Place: When Facts Obscure the Truth — Janna Zonder

Additional Finalists:

Confessions of an Amateur Ghost Hunter — Ashley Memory
Kayla Rae Has Been Driving All Day — Rachel Baiman
What I Did That Summer — Suzanne Adams
What Newton’s Laws of Motion Taught Me About Lust and Lies in High School — Nikki Campo

Semi-finalists:

A Toast to My Titties — Andi Brown
Leviticus 19:28 — Allison Darcy
Performance Studies — Claudia Crook
The Virginian — Tamela Rich

FICTION

1st Place: The Bridge — Melisssa Scott Sinclair
2nd Place: Becoming Posture — Jeannetta Craigwell-Graham
3rd Place: Stone Cold — Cathy Rigg Monetti

Honorable Mention:

From Away — Judith Turner-Yamamoto

Additional Finalists:

Howling Baby Arch — Katie McDougall
The Hotel Motel — Michael Sadoff

Semi-finalists:

Engulfed — Alex Pickens
Ineluctible — Jennifer Carson
Licking Bones — Suzanne Adams
Sustenance — Vicki Derderian
Zebras — Melissa Brown

About the Lit/South Awards & Litmosphere Journal

Charlotte Lit’s Lit/South Awards are on hiatus. From 2022 to 2024, we awarded more than $20,000 in prizes plus publication to writers who were current or past residents of North Carolina or its border states, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. All winners, finalists, and selected semi-finalists were published in print and online issues of Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, alongside the works of our judges.

Litmosphere is now a paying, open-submission journal published online in March and September. Submit in the first week of January and July through our Submittable page.