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4th Write Prize 2024: Joy by Isabella Peralta

Hiroshi built his wife in June. Rainy season had just hit Tokyo. The air grew humid, almost cloying. Mirrors of light bathed the city streets. Subway floors glistened under soaked soles. Hydrangeas flooded residential areas, their bright blue petals bursting as the sky poured. Hiroshi lives in… Read More

4th Write Prize 2024: In This World We Burn In Different Ways by Anvi Prabhu

NOON Nothing remains.                                                                In the end, nothing matters. The lilting sound of a whistle emerges in the distance again – the rise and fall of breath through someone’s lips – but this time Ira pays no heed. Her father died in his sleep last night; he didn’t… Read More

4th Write Prize 2024: Ascend by Priyanka Verma

She had come in through the back door late at night adorned like a bride. Standing alone in the vast white marbled kitchen, adjusting her thick green sari bouse, the fresh smell of jasmine infused with cheap coconut oil lingered around her. She sighed, she had told Kavita… Read More

4th Write Prize 2024: Fleeting Marrow by Yan F. Zhang

Born in 1939, Joy always lived her life as if it would never end, as if she walked a fairground that could never shut. Like everybody else, despite wearing a watch and always having a sense of time, always keeping count, life tread past, furtive and soft. Some years… Read More

4th Write Prize 2024: The Sound Of Water By Vee Matsumari

You looked adorable. Then again you always looked adorable to me, even when you were angry -sometimes especially so. Not that you were an angry child, I mean you were sometimes, but -you get what I mean. You had your blue goggles pasted over your forehead, and comically large… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2023: Back of House by Esther Okorocha

Back of House: “The Chef de Cuisine of The Mating Clinic” The first thing that Bisi noticed as she walked through the doors of the Kensington branch ofThe Mating Clinic was the smell. Her mother had told her that years ago, when the clinics were part ofthe publicly… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2023: My Last Real Housewife by Melissa Gitari

Listen here, you rancid, buck-toothed beast: I’ve done nothing but love you! I’d drive my rose gold Bentley off a cliff for you. Set my best wig ablaze and don it if youasked. Rip off my acrylics, nails beds and all, and lay them at your feet like some unholy… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2023: The Man Who Cried at the Sky by Benjamin Toma James

I met him at the corner of Kobayashi street in central Tokyo. It was easy to find him, despite theswarm of people. He was leaning against the wall beside the entrance to a soba restaurant, his rightleg jiggling, his nails between his teeth. No local would have expressed their agitation… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2023: Micromanageress by Rosie Chen

What I loved most about Florence, besides her intoxicating smell, was her clothes. Frombehind my ergonomically-adjusted computer monitor, I waited impatiently for her tounbutton her pea coat, peel open her leather trench. I arrived fifteen minutes before ourworking day officially started, at nine o’clock. She floated into the office between… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2023: Bleach by Liberty Martin

Kansas, 1965 Whenever they would wheel out Miss Stain Away at the Easter parade I would think to myself, Icould do that. Half them white women ain’t even that pretty, they just look the part. Blonde hair,blue eyes, long stick legs. Their bodies ain’t got no real shape, they ain’t… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2022: Ink by Olivia Douglass

Wrinkled clear film around a forearm. A menthol super-king cigarette is carried to Amy’s mouth. She takes a long, considered drag then exhales a smoke stream into cold air. It’s October and the park is dying. Her other arm wraps tightly around her waist, elbow resting on the… Read More

4thWrite Prize 2022: End of the World by Dionne McCulloch

Her husband hasn’t forgiven her yet for adopting a dog without consulting him when they already have twin, 2-year old boys to chew the furniture and lay dark trails of pee across the carpet. She also never told him how near she came to drowning herself in the… Read More