Winners of this year’s Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest were announced last Saturday night during the 2011 Celebration of Change at UAA’s Wendy Williamson Auditorium. The contest, sponsored by Radical Arts for Women (RAW), is named in honor of Nicole Blizzard, an Anchorage lesbian writer and creator, publisher, and editor of the local LGBT literary journal Naked Ptarmigan, who passed away in December 2009. The contest was open to women living in Alaska as of January 2011, with stories required to be works of fiction of between 250 and 5,000 words and containing some lesbian content.

This year’s contest was judged by Laura Carpenter, Jessicah Heller, and Melissa (Mel) Green. Judging was “blind”: that is, the names of authors were unknown to the judges until they had already made their selections. This year’s contest included entries from Anchorage, Eagle River, Homer, Juneau, and Fairbanks.

Winners were announced by Laura Carpenter, who also read an excerpt of the winning story — “Trespass” by Homer writer Teresa Sundmark, the story of a retired Assembly of God pastor whose struggle with his daughter’s sexuality mirrors his struggle with his own sexuality, identity, and faith.  Besides receiving a cash prize of $500, Teresa will also have her story published on the RAW website.  We’ll update this post with a link when it become available.

The complete winner’s list:

Grand prize and winner of $500

• “Trespass” by Teresa Sundmark

2nd place and winner of $300

• “Midwinter” by Karen Rasmussen

3rd place (tie) and winner of $50 each

• “The Phone Call” by Heather Teel
• “Crush” by Linda Johnson

Honorable mention

• “Sól” by JP Johnson
• “Mamie” by Mildred P Boesser
• “New World” by Alix Layton
• “Frosted” by Kellie Doherty

Congratulations, and thanks to all the writers for sharing your work!