Congratulations to the finalists of our 2024 SASFest Short Fiction Contest. Their contest entries will be published in our anthology, New Fiction From the Festival 2024, edited by Amie M. Evans and Paul J. Willis. Our cover design is another one of Timothy Cummings’ paintings. This is The Carnival Procession, 2013, acrylic on panel. See more of Timothy’s work HERE or HERE. Many thanks to our fiction judge, Trebor Healey! You can see him at SASFest 2024 in March.

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

Ezra Adamo is a student from New Orleans; he was a runner-up in 2021 and a finalist in 2022 for the Saints and Sinners poetry competition.

RUNNER-UP: Ariadne Blayde is a playwright and fiction writer based in America’s last true bohemia, New Orleans. Her first novel, Ash Tuesday, is out from indie press April Gloaming, and her play The Other Room is produced around the world. Her short stories have won contests including the Saints and Sinners Fiction Prize and the Quantum Shorts People’s Choice Prize, and her writing has appeared in various anthologies. She writes speculative fiction, historical fiction, and work focusing on social and environmental justice. Ariadne moonlights as a ghost tour guide in the French Quarter. www.ariadneblayde.com

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) is a queer, previously unhoused veteran who holds an MFA and a PhD in Creative Writing. Their fiction can be found in or is forthcoming from Story, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, South Carolina Review and elsewhere. Other work appears in The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, Consequence, and other journals. They teach at UC-Blue Ash and are the Managing Editor of New Ohio Review.

Edward Cahill is Professor of English at Fordham University, where he teaches modern and contemporary fiction. He is the author of Disorderly Men: A Novel (2023) and Liberty of the Imagination: Aesthetic Theory, Literary Form, and Politics in the Early United States (2012), as well as numerous essays and articles. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Marco Carocari originally hails from Switzerland and now lives in the Californian desert with his exceptionally sweet and supportive—AKA patient—husband. His debut novel, Blackout, was nominated for a Lefty and won The NYCBigBookAward and Independent Press Award for Best LGBTQ Novel. His short stories appeared in Malice Domestic 16: Mystery Most Diabolical (“All In The Planning”) and the Saints & Sinners 2023 Short Fiction Anthology (“Grace”). Find him on social media or at www.marcocarocari.com

On weekdays from nine to five, Chyx (pronounced Chase) writes incredibly nerdy stuff (financial statements auditing standards) that bore people to tears. On weekdays from five to nine, they try to write stories that move people to tears. When not writing, Chyx practices three martial arts, which coincidentally, results in a lot of tears (for themselves and sometimes their opponents).

Bookseller, blogger, writer, avid traveller, street food victim, and dedicated follower of fashion, Anil Classen spent his first 21 years in the seaside city of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Winner of the Writing District and Parracombe Prize, his work has been shortlisted for the Letter Review and Exeter Short Story Prize. Now living in Switzerland, he is working on that elusive perfect first draft that is being honed through an online writing course.

Duncan Davidson began writing after a career in architecture. His interest in a “trying to hold on” narrative has become a hallmark of his work, as have stories exploring the machinery of intimacy. His recent fiction touches on the delight of found beauty, issues of aging bodies, and the natural complexities of relationships matured over a long, full life. Davidson lives in Seattle with his husband.

RUNNER-UP: Alfred P. Doblin has spent most of his professional career working as a journalist, most notably as the Editorial Page Editor of The (Bergen) Record in New Jersey from 2006-2018. Writing a twice-weekly column and editorials, he has been recognized by numerous state and national journalism associations, including NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, and was nominated four times for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Newspaper Columnist. In 2011, he won the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) award for excellence in editorial writing. Currently working in communications, he lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Daniel Galef was born and raised in Lafayette County, Mississippi, but ping-ponged around from Montréal to Tallahassee and currently resides in one of the less fashionable corners of Ohio. He writes poetry, fiction, humor, and musical plays, and his first book, Imaginary Sonnets, was published in 2023. Imaginary Sonnets is a collection of persona poems from the points of view of historical figures including Lucrezia Borgia, Wernher von Braun, Louis Till, the ancient poet Nossis, and a monk’s skull exhumed by Lord Byron: danielgalef.com/book/

Page Getz is an author, journalist, and activist from California, where she worked for the Los Angeles Times and Pacifica Radio. She was raised in Kansas, which drove her to fiction. An MFA graduate of the University of British Columbia, she served as a New Shoots anthology editor and mentor. Her work appears in Tidal Basin Review, Vermillion, Spectrum, Whistling Fire, Apricity Magazine and forthcoming Atlanta Review. Obsessed with yoga, socialism and penguins, she lives in Vancouver with her family and a constant procession of animals, not including penguins, but maybe someday.

Merle Kinney is a Mississipian transplanted to Denver who writes about gender, work, and digital spaces. Their stories can be seen in Catapult, Dime Show Review, and The Furious Gazelle.

Adam Judah Krasnoff is a student at Tufts University and a writer of prose and poetry. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, much of his writing focuses on the situation of the Jewish diaspora in the American South. His work has been published in the Oxonian Review, Mount Hope, and on poets.org.

Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, most recently The Secret That is Not a Secret, a collection of ten interlocking tales of mysticism, queerness, and magic. Jay works as a political commentator for CNN and Rolling Stone, a meditation teacher, and a rabbi. Jay was a professional LGBTQ+ activist for ten years, and is the author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He holds a JD from Yale, a PhD from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence. He lives outside of New York City.

Jen OConnor started writing when she realized (rather late in life) she is a Lesbian. Her poems and short stories appear in several literary journals, including American Writers Review and London Journal of Fiction. Her plays have been produced throughout the U.S. and The Girl Who Would Be King was a winner of Chicago’s Pride Films and Plays Women’s Words contest and is published by Stage Rights. Jen was a finalist in New Letters Robert Day contest for Fiction and just won a Grant from Speculative Literature Foundation. She holds MA and MFA degrees in theatre and worked happily as a writer at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Ames O’Neill is an artist and writer from Maryland. Their queer eco-fiction has been published in The Susquehanna Review and Halfway Down the Stairs and has won the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Award in Fiction. They are currently pursuing their MFA in fiction at Arizona State University.

Patrick Earl Ryan was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, in a family spanning 5 continents and 7 generations in the city. His debut short story collection, If We Were Electric, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. He’s currently finishing a new story collection, Fancy Gumbo. His stories have appeared in Ontario Review, Pleiades, Best New American Voices, Men on Men, James White Review, Gertrude, and Saints and Sinners 2021, among others. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the LGBTQ+ literary journal Lodestar Quarterly and lives in San Francisco.

WINNER: Charlie J. Stephens is a queer, non-binary, mixed-race writer from the PNW. Born and raised in Salem, Oregon, Charlie has lived all over the U.S. as a bike messenger, wilderness guide, high school English teacher, and seasonal shark diver (for educational purposes only.) Currently living in Port Orford on the Oregon coast, they are the owner of Sea Wolf Books & Community Writing Center. Charlie’s 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 will be published by Torrey House Press in April 2024.

Doug Tompos has enjoyed a long career as an actor, writer and director in both New York and Los Angeles. His play, Bent to the Flame: A Night with Tennessee Williams, was awarded “Outstanding Solo Show” at the 2007 N.Y. International Fringe Festival, and was also presented at the 2009 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival. His award-winning short films, Coming of Age and Dotting the “I”, both had premieres at the Festival de Cannes before playing film festivals around the world. Both films can now be seen on HERE.TV. Doug currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

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.