We are pleased to announce that our 2022 judge Brenda Peynado has selected a winner and runner-up as well as two honorable mentions from a slate of finalists and semi-finalists for North American Review's 2022 Kurt Vonnegut Prize in Speculative Literature. A big thank you to everyone who submitted a story for the prize. We had 296 entries this year, and we thoroughly enjoyed reading such an abundance of excellent fiction. The winner and runner-up will appear in the Summer 2022 issue of the North American Review, and all entrants will receive a copy.
FIRST PLACE
Kellie Wells - My Dog Lenny Bruce
RUNNER-UP
Eric Rasmussen - Love the Neighbors
HONORABLE MENTIONS
JP Kemmick - On Island
Johnny Lynas - You Are Going to Watch Me Eat This Entire Salmon
FINALISTS
Andrea Imdacha - Mohini Baba
Trevor McGregor - Blinder
Maura Stanton - Inheritance
Lindsay Starck - Fata Morgana
SEMIFINALISTS
Mary Grimm - Simone de Beauvoir is Living on Mars
Lowell McKay - Blue Ladder
Robert Walikis - Peak Child
Mike Li - Birthday in Luoyang
David Schwartz - Our Last Resort
Annie Hayter - Hemmed
Brian Brodeur - Blood Fables
PRELIMINARY READERS
Kaitlyn Askelson, Claire Bathurst, Celeste Eddy, Hannah Gebers, Sidney Haren, Maddie Kizer, Emma Kossayian, Patrick Markovich, Shelby McGriff, Lauren McGuill, Bailey Moyle, Sierra Nemmers, Isaac Nielson, Morgan Reichel, Leonel Sepulveda, Stetson Smith, Taylor Snyder, Daria Tessmer, Elizabeth Tulley, Amanda Vogl.
KURT VONNEGUT’s long friendship with former North American Review fiction editor Loree Rackstraw brought him often to our hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. We are proud to honor the legacy of that friendship with a fiction prize that recognizes speculative writing with the wit, irreverence, humanity, and stylistic daring of its namesake.
BRENDA PEYNADO is a Dominican American writer who mainly works with fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. She received her MFA in fiction from Florida State University, and her Ph.D from the University of Cincinnati. She has received many awards including a Nelson Algren Award, an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two Vermont Studio Center fellowships, and inclusion in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best Small Fiction anthologies, along with many others. She currently teaches at the University of Houston.