CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award
The CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award for unpublished creative nonfiction up to 6,000 words is open to entries every November and December and awarded the following May. Three winners are selected by a guest judge, with $3,000 and publication awarded. Two pieces are also selected by CRAFT editors in the editors' choice round.
Judges:
2020: Joy Castro
On Possessing a Body by Lotte Mitchell Reford
Content Warning—disordered eating I At night, I find myself lying in bed near bursting with memory, as if something gone could still rip through me and flower. And yes I let myself get hungrier. It feels impossible to…
What I Do and Don’t Remember from the Days and Nights of Endlessly Smoking Crack and Shooting Heroin by Christian Bodney
It’s all a blur. It can be separated into two five-year periods: using alone and using with Haley. Haley had piercings everywhere: the bridge of her nose, her septum, her nipples, her belly button. She had stretched lobes—one had…
Where Am I From? by Amber Wong
“I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’” —Alasdair MacIntyre No one would talk. It was as…
All the Pretty Little Lies by Amy V. Borg
Content Warning—suicidal ideation The story I tell goes something like this: Did you know I once helped a boy escape from a mental hospital? When I tell it that way, people start imagining things: guns blazing, alarms blaring,…
Tatuajes by Rubén Degollado
Indiana, in our cold one-car garage, motes of dust falling sideways, the sunlight diffused by the snow covering the ground outside, and we watched Apá working the punching bag, his untaped fists flashing with each swing. Behind my brother…
Following Floodlights Instead of the Moon by Gina DeMillo Wagner
The nature center has five baby sea turtles, each in their own 20-gallon saltwater tank. When I see them for the first time, I have to fight the impulse to plunge my hand into the water and scoop one…
The Stoics by Amy Evans
Content Warnings—death by suicide, gun violence One morning a science teacher at the high school found the window of his lab smashed and a dead possum on the floor. In my memory, the teacher is all gray: gray pants…
Roach Farm by JT Baldassarre
We had gone to bed late, on usual terms: “Let’s just talk about this in the morning.” That night we did what we called “No Touch Sleep,” a nickname for exactly what it sounds like, lying next to each…
Eight Months by Gilbert Arzola
January Two old men used to live next to each other. One is dead and the other is dying. The one that is dead planted a garden. The one that is dying is my father. My father sits in…
We Were the Wild Hunt by Myna Chang
Riding the night streets wrapped in our tight young skin, brave-stupid and untamed, magic bursting from our pores like new stars. We met under the sign of the flying horse, the vacant shell of an old gas station, our…