Congrats to First-Prize Winner Gregory Hill! Looking forward to reading The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles when it comes out, and East of Denver in the meantime.

The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles (novel) by Gregory Hill (Colorado)

It’s autumn of 1975 and Rancher Johnny Riles is in a rough patch.  He’s drunk, he’s depressed, his parents don’t like him, his loudmouth younger brother–whom Johnny taught to play basketball–just got drafted by the Kentucky Colonels, and someone has brutally murdered his horse.  Things are about to get worse.

A prequel to the darkly comic father-son portrait East of Denver, The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles returns to the stark landscape of Stratford County for a gritty homespun tale of two brothers irrevocably at odds.

Gregory Hill lives, writes, and makes odd music on the Colorado High Plains.  His previous book, East of Denver, won the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction.

Read about other writers and their contest entries–including my semifinalist entry Sea Never Dry–by clicking on the titles:

FINALIST

An Old Horse Named Troy (middle-grade novel) by Ashley Mace Havird (Louisiana)
Andretti in the El Camino (stories) by Terrance Manning, Jr. (Pennsylvania)
Tiki Man (novel) by Thomas M. Atkinson (Ohio)
One Eye Closed Tight Against the Coming Jesus (stories) by Shane Stricker (West Virginia)

SEMIFINALIST

Go Home (novel) by Sohrab Homi Fracis (Florida)
Insulting the Flesh (stories) by James Reed (Nebraska)
Twilight (stories) by Helen Degen Cohen (Illinois)
Sea Never Dry (novel) by Ben East (Virginia)
Love War Stories (stories) by Ivelisse Rodriguez (New Jersey)
The Beautiful Gathering (novel) by Antoinette Mehler (Colorado)
Love, Longing, and Exile (stories) by Bipin Aurora (California)
The Outskirts of Nowhere (stories) by Robert McGuill (Colorado)
Unredeemed: Hateful and other stories (stories) by EC Hanlon (Massachusetts)
By the Fountain of the Four Rivers (linked stories) by Tony Ardizzone (Oregon)

HONORABLE MENTION

The Other Side of Silence (stories) by George Harrar (Massachusetts)
The Magic Laundry (stories) by Jacob M. Appel (New York)
Tandy Caide, C.P.A. (novel) by Stephanie Wilbur Ash (Minnesota)
King of the Gypsies (stories) by Lenore Myka (Massachusetts)
Cross-Eyed Monkey Cabaret (stories) by Aaron Tillman (Massachusetts)
Missionaries (stories) by David Ebenbach (Washington, DC)
Penpals and other stories (stories) by Robert Perchan (South Korea)
The Limp and the Lens (middle-grade novel) by Brigit Mikusko (New York)
The Negro Claim (novel) by Kim McLarin (Massachusetts)
The Patchwork Variations (stories) by Manini Nayar (Pennsylvania)
Woman at the Window (novel) by Mary Anderson Parks (California)

These 26 titles were selected from 385 submissions.  Congrats to all!