Betelnut, Soldier-Wolf 檳榔,兵狼: Fiction by YakuzaBaby
Grand Prize Winner, Middle School Category Betelnut, Soldier-Wolf: 檳榔,兵狼 Echo sat on the edge of the cracked leather seat, clipping a curler into her bangs. What the hell was she doing in this dingy-ass store, every surface plastered with slippery tiles in dire need of grouting, a flickering neon sign out front with the words 檳榔 五十年老店 and a drawing of a clawed hand faded into it. Though she could not read the words, she found the strange hand amusing. Her phone vibrated…
“One Order of Dan Bing, Please”: Creative Non-Fiction by Tristan Tang
Grand Prize Winner, High School Category 老闆, 我要一份蛋餅! Summers in Taiwan are brutal. I mean, think of the thrashing Da’an heat, cooking you alive like a fried egg from a breakfast shop. Or picture an army of mosquitoes, all nosediving towards you with their suckers out, ready to unleash an unrelenting week of itchiness. Buzz. The irritating sound made me sigh. A mosquito flew in circles around my ear, taunting me for not killing it before it’d injected its…
Gravitational Pull: Fiction by Susan L. Lin
Honorable Mention, Adult Category In one of my earliest memories, my sister Lulu lies facedown on the living room sofa while our mother leans over her prone body, liberally applying a topical medication behind her ears. The skin there is puffy and raw, an open wound. “Your zǐzǐ pointed at the moon, and look what happened,” our mother says to me, though her gaze never strays from the task at hand. “Now you will know never to do the same.” Lulu whimpers into the seat cushion, and when…
Salty Like Tears: Creative Nonfiction by Grace Hwang Lynch
Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category March is the rainiest month in Taiwan. Not the afternoon cloudbursts of a tropical summer, nor the furious monsoons of early fall; in the time between winter and spring, the sky is a steady stream of black. But this was the period when the boys and I could spend some extended time on the island. During that first family trip to Taiwan when the boys were seven and ten, the kids and I stayed in Taipei after my husband flew back to the states for work. My job…