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

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

Now in its second year, Charlotte Lit’s Lit/South Awards are open to current and past residents of North Carolina and its four border states, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. In 2023, $7,000 in total prizes were awarded in three categories: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Entries are accepted annually from September 1 to November 1 at our Submittable page.

All prize-winning entries and selected finalists and semi-finalists are published in Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, alongside the works of our judges.

To order one or more copies of Litmosphere Issue 2 — $15, shipped — go here.

Note: all contest entrants will automatically receive one print copy of the journal to their Submittable postal address. Additional copies can be ordered using the link above.