ASF Camera-Flash Fiction Contest Results
August 22, 2013 § Leave a comment
American Short Fiction has posted the winner and finalists for its Camera-Flash Fiction Contest.
People who stopped by the ASF table at AWP Boston were given their choice of one of eight vintage photographs on which to base a piece of flash fiction. The winning story is “After Taking on the Milk Challenge the Earth Bear Learns Something About the Nature of Human Experience” by Caleb Curtiss:
This is what cattle looks like before it becomes a carcass, his father, who’d just finished using what looked like a machete to peel primal cuts of beef from the bone and tendon that held them, said. It was the Earth Bear’s duty to sort what was left of the animal into three metal cans labeled Edible, Inedible, and Bones. These buckets and their contents were what he thought about as he sat watching cowboy after cowboy being thrown to the ground like plaid handkerchiefs.
The other finalists are Lauren Becker, Joanna Kenyon, Kevin Fink, Amy Butcher, and Shawn Huelle.
I selected number 8, the only color photo in the bunch, with the people doing the jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table, because it reminded me of photos from when my mother was young and raised my older brother as a toddler, but then I never got around to writing my story because I left the photo at the bottom of my tote bag, amongst the beer coozies and promotional cards, and forgot about it. Maybe I’ll still give it a whirl. I’m a little disappointed that one didn’t prompt any of the finalists, though it is interesting that the same photo was used for three of the six featured stories.
Neil Serven 
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