Congratulations to the finalists of our 2025 SASFest Short Fiction Contest. Their contest entries will be published in our anthology, New Fiction From the Festival 2025, edited by Morgan Hufstader and Paul J. Willis. Our cover design is another one of Timothy Cummings’ paintings. This is Winter Solstice Greetings, acrylic on panel. See more of Timothy’s work HERE or HERE. Many thanks to our fiction judge, Greg Herren!

Finalists are pictured alphabetically from the top, left to right, and their bios are below.

 

Izzy Beach (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based horror writer, and recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence’s MFA in Writing program. Originally from New Jersey, Izzy spent their childhood playing mermaids and reading books about very traumatized magical children. Prior to completing their MFA, Izzy lived abroad in Paris, France where they received their BA at The American University of Paris. There they majored in Creative Writing and double-minored in Comparative Literature and Gender Studies. Izzy’s work is interested in the beauties and horrors of the body, complex queer relationships, mothers and daughters, folklore, fantasy, monstrosity, and angry femmes.

Anil Classen is a German South African writer of Indian descent based in Switzerland with a background in psychology and journalism. Avid follower of fashion, street food enthusiast, and bookworm, he swapped city life for the countryside where he found his love of writing. Winner of the Writing District and Parracombe Prize, his work has been shortlisted for the Wells Festival of Literature Competition and Anthology Short Story Competition.

John Copenhaver is an award-winning author whose latest novel, Hall of Mirrors, was named a New York Times Crime Novel of the Year. His debut, Dodging and Burning, won the Macavity Award, and The Savage Kind earned the Lambda Literary Award. A founding member of Queer Crime Writers, he teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University, mentors in the University of Nebraska MFA program, and lives in Richmond, VA, with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul Herrity.  www.johncopenhaver.com

WINNER: Laura Corin (they/she) is a genderqueer writer, Lambda Literary Fellow, and Tin House alum who lives on Dena’ina land in Anchorage, Alaska, with their wife and daughter. Publications include The New York Times, The Guardian, The Writer, Anchorage Daily News, the anthology Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry, and small literary publications. When not writing, Laura can be found running along Alaska mountain trails, singing Broadway show tunes off-key to alert bears to her presence.

J. Duncan Davidson writes for the same reasons others might knit…for quiet comfort and discovery.  His interest in “holding on” narratives has become a hallmark of his work, as have stories exploring the machinery of intimacy.  His recent fiction touches on the delights of found beauty, issues of aging bodies, and the natural complexities of relationships matured over a long, full life.  Davidson lives with his husband in Seattle.

Lewis DeSimone’s most recent novel, Exit Wounds (Rebel Satori Press, 2024), tackles the complexities of growing older in a society that is transforming at record speed. “Funny, surprising, thoughtful and sad,” writes Felice Picano, “DeSimone’s Exit Wounds is his love letter to San Francisco and a long overdue paean to the sustaining nature of gay male friendships.” Lewis’s previous novels include Channeling Morgan, The Heart’s History, and Chemistry. After a quarter century in the Bay Area, he now lives in Minnesota, where he’s working on his next novel and remembering how to shovel snow.

Alfred P. Doblin has spent most of his professional career working as a journalist. He has been recognized by numerous state and national journalism associations, including the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) award for excellence in editorial writing, the Society of the Silurians, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, and was nominated four times for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Columnist. He was a runner-up in the Saints and Sinners 2024 Short Fiction Contest, and his debut book, Tales of the Lavender Twilight, a collection of 11 interrelated short stories, will be released this spring by Rattling Good Yarns Press. Doblin lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Latina/e artist from the Borderlands and the author of dream life of night owls (Open Country Press), We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press), the body is where it all begins (Querencia Press), and red delicious (dancing girl press). Her book death is a mariachi won the 2024 May Sarton NH Prize for Poetry and will be published in 2025.  Other work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, and first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest. MRae is an associate editor for RHINO Poetry.  marcyraehenry.com

Miah Jeffra is author of four books—most recently The Violence Almanac (finalist for several awards, including the Grace Paley and Robert C Jones Book Prizes) and the novel American Gospel, finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award—and is co-editor of the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart. Work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, ANMLY, DIAGRAM, storySouth and many others. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches writing, decolonial studies, and cultural theory at Santa Clara University.

RUNNER-UP: Reginald Kent (he/they) calls both Seattle and Singapore home. He holds an MFA from The University of Washington’s program in Creative Writing and is currently continuing his scholarship in UW’s English Ph.D. program in Literature and Culture. They have work featured in The Best Asian Short Stories 2022 collection and QLRS. He was a fellow of the 2023 American Short Fiction Workshop as well as the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices 2024. Reginald’s creative work and scholarship focuses on contributing towards and celebrating the literature and performances of queers of colour. Find him at: https://english.washington.edu/people/reginald-kent

Mina Manchester received her MFA from the Sewanee School of Letters. Her short stories and essays have been finalists for awards and published in: Electric Literature, HuffPost, The Master’s Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, Columbia Journal, The Evergreen Review, The Normal School, Pinch Journal, New Millennium Writings, and The Bellingham Review. A Scandinavian American originally from Seattle, she’s an Editorial Assistant for Delphinium Books in Los Angeles.

Meagan Perry (she/her) grew up in Alberta, Canada. Her work has been published in The Saint Anne’s Review, Carolina Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, and others. Her audio work has been heard on English-language public radio around the world, and also on many podcasts. She was on the organizing team for Queer Sightings, the first gay and lesbian film festival in Edmonton, and now lives with her partner in Toronto. She wants every worker to have decent wages and union protections. For more: meaganperry.com.

RUNNER-UP: David Pratt is the author of the Lambda-winning Bob the Book (Chelsea Station Editions), Wallaçonia (Beautiful Dreamer Press), Todd Sweeney (Hosta Press) Looking After Joey (Lethe Press), and a story collection, My Movie (Chelsea Station). His stories have appeared in several periodicals and anthologies, including SAS’s New Fiction from the Festival 2025. He has performed work for the theater in New York City and Michigan. In 2020-2021 he published The Book of Humiliation, an “anti-novel” in 16 zines.

Ever since his teens, Tom Semmes has exhibited a talent for the visual arts, studying painting at RISD and building a career as a graphic and web designer. Now retired, he looked for fresh sources of inspiration and found it in community theater and a daily journaling practice. Two years ago, Tom started a writer’s group called Spark Plugs, which meets weekly and holds him accountable to finish the stories he starts. Tom is a resident of Frederick, MD.

Charlie J. Stephens is a queer, non-binary writer from the Pacific Northwest. Born and raised in Salem, Oregon, and current resident of Port Orford on the southern Oregon coast, they are the owner of Sea Wolf Books & Community Writing Center. Charlie’s short fiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Best Small Fictions Anthology, New World Writing, Original Plumbing, and elsewhere. Their debut novel, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest was published by Torrey House Press in 2024 and their new collection of short stories will be published by Buckman Publishing in spring 2026. More at charliejstephenswriting.com.

Visit www.sasfest.org for more information on Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival.

 

SASFest is grateful to:

Publisher – Rebel Satori Press

John Burton Harter Foundation

Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival is a program of the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival. Visit sasfest.org for more information about our annual event.