Mississippi Review Prize Issue 2014

The latest issue of Mississippi Review features the winners of the 2014 Contests. Winners received publication and $1,000.

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the fiction prize winner. Here is how her piece starts: “When she heard the blind girl was coming to spend mornings at the normal school, Jill suspected they’d stick her in the desk next to hers. She had the best grades and the fewest friends, a combo that made her uniquely qualified to keep company with a cripple.”

And Harold Whit Williams won the poetry prize with “Blue Dreams” which starts:

At this juncture the river is too wide,
Too swift and too strong. A bottleneck
Slide scraped along taut catgut strings
That sing and moan like a crop-beaten
Beast of burden. Cry gee, then cry haw.
Cry over evil deeds done at midnight.
Holler sweet Lucifer back in his hole.
What a sight! This old muddy flooding
Fields, lapping the levee. I’ll get there
Somehow, someway, and on that day
You’ll be sorry you’ve done me wrong.