The story of the week for March 18 to 22 is…

Sólarkaffi by Râna Campbell

The story of the week for March 11 to 15 is…

The Monument by Ron Scully

The story of the week for March 4 to 8 is…

Widowhood @ 72 by Shoshauna Shy
and
We Have Always Played With the Faceless Doll by Joel O’Flaherty

The story of the week for February 26 to March 1 is…

The Keen Gardener by Deborah Tapper

The story of the week for February 19 to 23 is…

Early Spring by Kai Wang

The story of the week for February 12 to 16 is…

Out with the Old, In with the New by Carol Tymann

The story of the week for February 5 to 9 is…

A Puddle on the Bathroom Floor by Nico Calvanico

The story of the week for January 29 to February 2 is…

Time is No Thief by Chelsea Utecht

The winner of the 2023 Story of the Year, along with the $50 prize and enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, is:

Desert Blues in a Minor Key by Jonathan Kosik

The linguistic choices and presentation in this story are excellent, from the opening parallelism and the small alliterations to the line-by-line delivery that helps feed some of the complex layering and subtle character development. The hissing grandmother and valve stem set the mood, preparing us for the challenging ambiguity of the grandfather’s remark–is it targeted at the line above it, or the line below?–all followed by the discordant double meaning of the final two lines.

Jonathan joins Bob Thurber and Jennifer L. Freed as a two-time Story of the Year winner, after capturing the award in 2017 with Constellations.

Honourable mentions go to Widowmaker by Tim Boiteau and Keeping Up Appearances by Lynn Kozlowski.

The story of the week for January 22 to 26 is…

A Ring and a Letter by Deborah Tapper