Results: The Nasiona Writing Prompts Tournament #5

FORGETTING IS WORSE THAN...

We are now accepting submissions for tournament #6: WHEN I LEARNED I WAS DIFFERENT. Submissions must be non-fiction stories about your life. Think micro-memoir. Deadline: April 30th. $5.25 USD. Click here for submission details.⁣⁣⁣ The winner takes home 35% of the $ pot and the runner-up takes home 15% of the $ pot.⁣⁣⁣ Go here to read the results of our previous tournaments.

TOP-6 SUBMISSIONS

1. Lee Parpart

Remembering Bert

Forgetting is worse than shock therapy. It’s worse than space travel.
It might be worse than death.

I know this because of Grandpa Bert. Harvard boy.

Physicist, whose memory fled, slowly, until his students
called him Professor I Don’t Know.

Bert’s days were the porch. Taking apart
motors. Polishing the pieces with a blackened rag.

I was making tea one day when he appeared
in the kitchen and saw the flame beneath the kettle.

“I was a scientist,” he said. “We used Bunsen burners.”

His gaze arching across decades.
Electricity looking for a place to land.

2. Dominique Margolis

The Chicken or the Egg

Forgetting is worse than remembering that my grandmother walked into my father’s bedroom during naptime as he was about to rape me when I was four because I did try to forget but the forgetting did not stay and got even worse because by then I had moved across an ocean and an entire continent and I did not speak the new language and I did not know the ways so my body was free to catch me and paralyze me until I nearly died but could not, which forced me to remember all over again and try to forget.

3. Ericka Lutz

Trial Run for Launching

My note: “I’ll be back.” The next bus to a random destination: Red Bluff, 113°. Drab motel, I cool in the pool. A woman on the edge wants to sew me a dress; she has no daughters. Her place: goopy eyed kittens, dishes buzzing with flies, bags of remnants. Her trembling hands pin fabric around my hips. My head pounds, guilty: I can leave. I run to my room and order a pizza – large so they think I’m not alone – and eat every wedge of limp self-hatred. The next morning, I go home. They don’t ask. I’ll never tell.

4. Shannon O'Neill

LAST WINTER, LATE SUMMER

It’s been awhile since I’ve read my
horoscope, but occasionally
I think of that terrible fight I had
with my mom in the car one wintry Monday
morning. I don’t recall the words
exchanged, but I can remember carrying my viola
through the school’s slushy parking lot after
admitting— in tears— something vulnerable.
Remember first period, getting her text: “Cancer
horoscope… You may have put up a wall
around your heart recently.” January 22nd,
my half birthday. Eighteen months and some sunshine
later, today’s starts with “Mermaids…” What a
funny thought: July. January. Mermaids. All of this,
and wet eyes.

5. Kyrié Eleison Owen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Across

1 Snow.
Feminine.
The act of snow falling to the ground.
What should have been my sister’s name.

2 Grandmother.
The relationship between
an elder and child.
My sisters and I call her this name,
though the spelling may be wrong.

3 Language.
Stripped from my Grandmother’s tongue—
She teaches what she can recall.
Forgetting our peoples’ history
is worse than the pains of learning it.

Down

Snow.
Masculine.
The act of snow falling to the ground.
My sister’s middle name.
Given for her winter birthday.
Our grandmother gave the wrong version,
but it’s still snow.

6. Molly Johnsen

Neither of Us

You’re always thinking about what’s next, so you forget what’s happening. Some things I wish you’d kept: the way we laughed in disbelief, naked limbs braided. The bathroom with the tropical wallpaper, jellied bagels.

Do you know you told me I have a small mouth? Not as a compliment. After you said just friends, I went camping and slept the whole time. You don’t know that. And you don’t know that now, in my living room, I’m noticing the way your eyes dart around when you’re thinking. You don’t remember that you ruined me. Or maybe I never told you.

TOP-6: Author Bios

Lee Parpart worked as a journalist and film studies lecturer before returning to creative writing in 2015 and becoming a full-time editor. Her essays, poetry, and fiction have appeared in 17 seconds, periodicities: a journal of poetics; Essays on Canadian Writing, and Silver Birch Press, and on the websites of Arc Poetry Magazine, Negative Capability Press, and Tupelo Press. Lee won an emerging writer prize from Open Book: Ontario; first place in Arc Poetry Magazine’s spring 2020 Award of Awesomeness; second place in the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival 2020 poetry contest; and honourable mention in Negative Capability Press’s spring 2020 poetry contest. She lives in Toronto, where she edits for Iguana Books.

Dominique Margolis is an emerging immigrant author who grew up in a remote village in Southern France. In French, she was published in Anna Evans’ Communication Intuitive (ALMP, 2004). In English, she was recently published in Friday Flash Fiction and in The Centifictionist (forthcoming).

Ericka Lutz’s short fiction, CNF, and poetry has been published in Literary Mama, Verve, The Slate, Green Mountains Review, Scrivener Creative Review, Sideshow, and many others. She was a two-time Fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, winner of the Boston Fiction Festival. and author of the novel, The Edge of Maybe.

I’m Shannon O’Neill, an 18 year-old freshman at Bard College. I like writing poetry about my youth since I’m in the midst of it, and I’m fascinated with the banal aspects of life & how writers make them novel again with their words. I write because I’m always searching for a new way to say something and to communicate to others.

Kyrié Eleison is an experimental writer and MFA student in the nonfiction cohort at UC Riverside. Her work has been published in Flights and On Loan from the Cosmos. Kyrié is the editor-in-chief of the Santa Ana River Review. She is Acoma and Comanche.

Molly Johnsen is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Syracuse University. She lives in Vergennes, VT.

RESULTS

 Matches playedWinsLossesWin %Average Vote %# of votes1st Place2nd Place3rd PlacePrize winnings $ in USD
Lee Parpart6601008024/301  $30.80
Dominique Margolis64266.6756.6717/30 1 $13.20
Ericka Lutz75271.4365.7123/35  1 
Shannon O’Neill541806416/25    
Kyrié Eleison Owen532606817/25    
Molly Johnsen532605213/25    
Jenny Yang Cropp422506012/20    
Jonathan Andrew Pérez422506012/20    
Katherine Silke31233.3333.335/15    
Leah Fisher41325306/20    
Shane Vande Brake41325204/20    
Simué Rose Isabel1010402/5    
McKenna Hall1010402/5    
Steph Tan1010402/5    
Victoria Lewis1010402/5    
Lindsey Grant1010402/5    
Yvette Nipar1010201/5    
Ian MacMenamin101000/5    
John Wykle101000/5    
Tanner Armatis101000/5    
Gina Sampaio101000/5    
Mackenzie Gellner101000/5    

BRACKETS

Round 1VotesRound 2VotesRound 3Votes Round-Robin FinalVotes     
       Most wins = crowned tournament winner.      
(Group A)             
Ian MacMenamin0Group AA           
vs. Jenny Yang Cropp1          
Jenny Yang Cropp5vs.         Round-Robin WinsRound-Robin Losses
  Kyrié Eleison Owen4 Dominique Margolis4  Dominique Margolis3 1st PlaceLee Parpart20
Kyrié Eleison Owen5        2nd PlaceDominique Margolis11
vs. Jenny Yang Cropp2      3rd PlaceEricka Lutz02
John Wykle0vs.           
  Shannon O’Neill3vs.  vs.      
(Group B)             
Shannon O’Neill3Jenny Yang Cropp4          
vs. vs.           
Simué Rose Isabel2Leah Fisher1          
    Shannon O’Neill1 Ericka Lutz2     
Leah Fisher5Kyrié Eleison Owen1          
vs. vs.           
Tanner Armatis0Shannon O’Neill4          
              
(Group C) Kyrié Eleison Owen5          
Molly Johnsen5vs.           
vs. Leah Fisher0          
Gina Sampaio0            
  Shannon O’Neill5Kyrié Eleison Owen2 Ericka Lutz2     
Jonathan Andrew Pérez3vs.           
vs. Leah Fisher0          
McKenna Hall2            
    vs.  vs.      
(Group D) Group BB           
Steph Tan2Molly Johnsen3          
vs. vs.           
Ericka Lutz3Jonathan Andrew Pérez2          
    Ericka Lutz3 Lee Parpart3     
Shane Vande Brake4Molly Johnsen0          
vs. vs.           
Yvette Nipar1Ericka Lutz5          
              
(Group E) Molly Johnsen5          
Victoria Lewis2vs.           
vs. Shane Vande Brake0          
 Dominique Margolis3            
  Jonathan Andrew Pérez2Molly Johnsen0  Dominique Margolis2     
Mackenzie Gellner0vs.           
vs. Ericka Lutz3          
Katherine Silke5            
  Jonathan Andrew Pérez5vs.  vs.      
(Group F) vs.           
Lee Parpart3Shane Vande Brake0          
vs.             
Lindsey Grant2Ericka Lutz5          
  vs Lee Parpart5 Lee Parpart3     
  Shane Vande Brake0          
              
              
  Group CC           
   Dominique Margolis5          
  vs.           
  Katherine Silke0          
              
   Dominique Margolis0          
  vs.           
  Lee Parpart5          
              
  Katherine Silke0          
  vs.           
  Lee Parpart5          
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