Banned Books Week writing contest winner announced!

The 2022 Banned Books Week writing contest has a winner! Congratulations to Quinn D. Connor for Word Count. Honorable mention goes to Linda Copeland for The Queens of Althearra.

Word Count by Quinn D. Connor 

(Banned Books Week writing contest winner)

I watch my words, I write.

Today, these are all I have left. I glance at my wrist-ticker as it clicks down from four (I), to three (watch), two (my), one (words)…

Silent night.

The river is alight with sunset. I watch the cars on the bridge with the page in my lap. Every evening, I bring these leftovers here, the few miscellaneous words I’ve scrounged for myself. I save them out of the “pleases,” “thank yous” and “hellos” that could devour them. I’m a miser. Still, they never add up to much…

 

The Queens of Althearra by Linda Copeland

(Banned Books Week writing contest honorable mention)

Three months after Brie died, Felicia was curled on her couch, after work, and sobbing quietly. The apartment was filled with the unearthly chorus of silence. It was too still, too much, and the noiselessness buzzed in her brain until she thought she was going to explode from sound’s absence. She’d put her phone on ‘Do Not Disturb,’ not wanting to make plans with her friends as part of a distraction from her grief. She also didn’t want to deal with her now ex-husband, Travis. She dreaded solitude, but it was all she wanted.

“You deserve this,” a voice told her. “It was all your fault. You couldn’t keep your marriage together, you couldn’t keep your daughter alive.”