From three unexpected prompts — pouring out of green jars, vaguely askew teeth, and the calculus of miracles — five remarkable stories were crafted that moved, surprised, and stayed with us.
Congratulations to all of our finalists:
Elsie Hovey — Eat This Miracle 🏆
Jon Debly — Her, Kafka, and the Cuckoo Bird
Dawn Johnston — Rebel and the Witch
Jeremy Thornhill — The Ashes from Our Dreams
Joanne MacNevin — Quarantine
Eat This Miracle - Elsie Hovey
Grief is hunger for the one you’ve loved and lost. Grief is debt, devotion, the painful privilege of having loved, all at once. Eat This Miracle lays bare the terrifying beauty of love and death: gut-wrenching, raw, honest, striking, original, this story gives language to unquenchable loss. From the very first lines, the point of view grips you. You care immediately, you care hungrily, you understand this is what grief is, written with clarity by one who has loved, as all long to love, and one who’s endured loss, as all who love long to avoid, or at the very least, delay. Grief is the cost of love. It’s the debt of having known such love, and to know it, and have it reflected back in such precise, aching, poetic, and truthful language as expressed in this short story is a gift. So, I thank you, author of Eat this Miracle, for this truly remarkable piece. It will stay with me.
What our Guest Judge had to say about this story:
Her, Kafka, and the Cuckoo Bird - Jon Debly
Where to begin! Her, Kafka, and the Cuckoo Bird, what a fantastic title! Instantly, you’re pulled into the story with the first line, “You are not the freshest cadaver at UPEI’s brand new faculty of medicine.” You become the protagonist, embodying their senses, the way they’re experiencing the world, trying to outrun a downward spiral in worn-out Chuck Taylors, running down their history to see where it all went wrong, and you feel it all: You’re slow, outpaced, feet striking the gravel violently. You’re allergic to the air. You have blisters. You’re Dostoyevskian inner turmoil. Kafkaesque existential unraveling. Living in a cramped shoebox, spending time between bed and floor. You fall for a girl with a stack of Russian lit by her elbow, how could you not? You know it's a bad idea, but you have no control, because love is love is love, and we have no say in the matter. She already has someone. Someone taller than you. Still, you follow her wake until her tide turns and meets yours, and find yourself one morning realizing “You are not a 5-star Michelin chef cutting jalapeño peppers,” staring at a “posthumous painting of her dog,” and then, down the line, you receive the message: “We need to talk.” So it goes. This story had me completely invested from the first line. It’s witty, sharp, wry, heartbreaking, deeply affecting. The writing pulls you in like a current you can’t resist. You can’t stop reading, you can’t look away. The narrative moves so effortlessly that you’re carried through it without realizing it’s over, and then you want to read it again, just to relive the speed at which it pulled you along! Absolutely incredible writing.
What our Guest Judge had to say about this story:
Rebel and the Witch - Dawn Johnston
If you believe in magic, magic will happen. This story opens by drawing you directly into the scene: a child standing on the sidewalk, believing she’s facing a witch’s house, seeking a potion for her father’s headaches, which began after her mother died. But the bungalow looks ordinary, overgrown and neglected, more tired than terrifying, just like the woman who opens the door, who could be forty or a hundred. Rebel and the Witch is endearing, warm, honest, built on showing rather than telling and trusting the reader to feel what is there. Genuine, unforced, grounded in emotional truth, the story balances humour, play, and sincerity beautifully. It’s wonderfully paced with excellent execution, and the characters feel fully alive on the page, arcing naturally. Rebel is headstrong, persistent, Agatha is initially reluctant but ultimately moved, and the father’s retreat into grief feels authentic. In the end, what begins as a child’s demand for magic becomes something more profound: the need for care, connection, and being seen. That is where true magic lies.
What our Guest Judge had to say about this story:
The Ashes from Our Dreams - Jeremy Thornhill
The Ashes from Our Dreams tackles guilt, being haunted by ourselves, and the things we carry long after the worst moments of our lives have passed. The story places us inside the protagonist’s mind, lost in purgatory, living with insomnia, trauma, burden, wandering a corridor for a lost soul, as if beneath water, unsure if they are awake. A subway delay triggers immediate spiraling thoughts of lifeless bodies on the tracks. Survival held together by ritual: “Seven bites. Never eight. Never six.” Scrubbing a bowl with bleach until fingertips burn white. “Again. Again. Again.” Routines to keep self-haunting at bay, and the stark reality that war reduces human lives to impossible equations of necessity, sacrifice, and survival. Unsettling, surreal, resonant, this story stays with you, wrestling with the question, what does it take to find peace? How do we confront memories we can’t outrun and truths we can’t escape? We all want forgiveness, and ultimately, can only have it if we confront ourselves and our own demons."
What our Guest Judge had to say about this story:
Quarantine - Joanne MacNevin
Quarantine drops the reader into isolation and asks what a miracle is. Is it “...a miracle to feel the dew against your toes on a warm summer morning?” The story explores longing in its many forms: a mother’s need to hold her child “tight, tight, tight”, a lover’s longing, human desire for privacy and authentic connection in an increasingly exposed world. Quarantine is reflective and intimate, aching with absence and a life paused mid-becoming, yet it shows resilience, hope and steadfast friendship, a friend caring for the protagonist's child during quarantine. What remains in the space between confinement and connection? Possibility ~ “but threads holding the universe together consist of infinite points, therefore infinite possibilities.”
What our Guest Judge had to say about this story: