For Mikrokosmos’s 70th Issue, our annual contest was directed towards high school students in the Wichita area. We are proud to announce the winners for Issue 70.
Fiction
Winner: “Dawn” by Alex Dixon
Alex Dixon, whose pronouns are they/them, is 18 and attends Derby High School. They have wanted to pursue writing since age 13, and everything they have done since has centered around bettering their craft. Alex admits that writing has always been their only constant in life and has kept them grounded through all the ups and downs. They are always thankful for the opportunities to share their writing with others.
This is an intriguing and well-paced story that encompasses elements of both mystery and suspense. I also found the dialogue quite strong (and realistic), which can be an element of fiction that is difficult. The overall plot is solid.
Poetry
1st Place Winner: “Where Did You Go?” by Deriyah Cavanaugh
Deriyah Cavanaugh is a sophomore at Northeast Magnet High School who started writing poetry just 3 years ago. She enjoys deep, emotional pieces of writing that allow readers to connect with their own experiences and emotions.
Deriyah’s piece uses great economy of language while still layering in a complicated meditation on love and loss. The use of nature and setting as metaphor is especially wonderful and beautifully realized.
2nd Place Winner: “Teenage Infatuation” by Amelia Boor
Amelia “Kit” Boor is a junior at Eisenhower High School. Boor is active in forensics club, debate club, and engineering club. Boor wrote her poems for Ms. Robinson’s English class.
“Teenage Infatuation” uses space and silence as a space of meaning, with waves of text and imagination arriving to layer, sentence by sentence and line by line, ever more complicated implications and realizations.
Editor’s Honorable Mention: “In Loving Memory–Saba Pivot” by Jakari Carter
Jakari Carter is a student at Northeast Magnet High School. The poem he submitted to the competition is inspired by the music artist Saba Pivot and his song of the same name. It showcases the development he went through in his life; from hopeful to depressed to determined. Saba Pivot is an artist whose experience mirrors Jakari’s and has had a positive impact on his life.
Jakari Carter’s piece is a dialogue between artist and admirer, which the writer says encompasses all the changes he’s gone through in his life. Inspired by an original song lyric, this new reiteration acts as a mirror which allows the speaker to commune with its original composer.
Fiction Contest Guest Judge
This year’s judge for the fiction contest is Kerry Jones. Kerry Jones is the director of the Writing Center and teaches courses in composition and literature at WSU. One of her more popular courses is Literature of the Jazz Age. She holds a BA in English from Mansfield University with dual minors in Philosophy and Creative Writing and an MFA in Fiction from Wichita State University. She has completed a novel, Dime Store Rita, and two collections of short stories, The Ghosts in the Glen and The Last Innocent Year. Her stories have appeared in many journals, including Sycamore Review, Hot Air Quarterly, Night Train, Paper Street, Blood Root, and others. She is the 2002 Richard Yates Short Story Award winner and received a special mention in the 2005 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her work has been a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award and was first runner up for the 2010 Wabash Prize. In 2007, she laid the groundwork for her second novel, Hymns at Candlemas, while a resident at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
Poetry Contest Guest Judge
This year’s judge for the poetry contest is Brian Turner. Brian Turner is the author of five collections of poetry (from Here, Bullet to The Wild Delight of Wild Things) and a memoir (My Life as a Foreign Country) and is the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres anthologies. A musician, he has also written and recorded several albums with The Interplanetary Acoustic Team, including 11 11 (Me Smiling) and The Retro Legion’s American Undertow. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was nominated for an Academy Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Brian was the distinguished visiting poet for Spring 2024 at Wichita State University. He lives in Orlando, Florida with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.