Unclassifiable Contest 2022 Winner and Finalists

The 2022 Unclassifiable Contest has ended, and a winner has been chosen by judge, Michael Martone!

Winner: “Postcard of Delicate Arch” by Emily Farranto

 I love the postcard as a form, and this fiction presents itself as a postcard diary (a collage of postcards) recording a trip west and return to the record of it in the delivered postcards, a scrapbook of postcard messages sent from the writer to the writer. Postcards, analogue tweets, inhabit a strange quasi-public, quasi-private space. They interact with the delivery system as well—postmarks, sorting barcodes, machinery damage, smears of ink—as if the transport itself is making a commentary on the text, aging the age. The text captures the sadness of postcards and the existential nature of the ephemera we all are constantly producing, the fictional residue of the vanished factual living. Publishing a story in a book or magazine creates the illusion of permanence—this will last, the type is set. But postcards (and this fiction) are about things disappearing before our eyes. Sublime evaporation. Sublime. Evaporation.

Michael Martone

Finalists:
Tori Rego, “Erased Pink Eraser”
David McDannald, “Online Dating is the Devil Theorem”

Thank you to all who submitted, for stretching our minds and engaging our imaginations! We hope to see your work again next year!

This entry was posted in Arts & Letters News, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.