As a writer who enters a fair number of contests (eight or nine last year, I think), it’s a nice change to be able to say I’ve won one.
My short story, Clay Allison’s Girl, was named the winner of the 2024 Longhorn Prize for fiction, awarded by the magazine Saddlebag Dispatches. The story was inspired by a visit to Dodge City, and particularly by the section in the wild west town’s museum about the life of the women who worked in its brothels. You can find it here:
Saddlebag Dispatches is dedicated to history and fiction exploring the old west. The issue my story appears in is otherwise focused on the California Gold Rush of 1849. In a little example of synchronicity, I was reading H.W. Brands’s excellent history of the gold rush, The Age of Gold, when I received the news about my story.
As part of my prize, I’ll be receiving a hand-made silver belt buckle, which I look forward to donning with my Levi’s and a cowboy shirt. I may have to spend my prize money on a pair of cowboy boots to complete the ensemble.
And in other writing news, just a few weeks after that, I had another story of mine – this one with a contemporary setting – appear in the British literary magazine. My story Order Carnivora appears in Thin Skin, a new magazine focusing on work by writers over the age of 50. You can read it here.
I’m still sending stuff all the English-speaking world, so with a bit of luck this won’t be the lead item on this site for long.