LRR 2015

Letter from the Editor

This journal is dozens of worlds stitched together. It is places and smells and characters and colors falling over one another when the pages close and bursting outward when the pages open. Press your nose to the binding and close the pages around your ears. Are you here yet?

These stories are our lovers, are our children; they keep us up at night. We dream of them and they, we hope, dream of us. These characters have belayed into the crevices of our brains; they have taken on lives of their own inside us. They look out of our eyes, chins on folded hands, and we are learning, slowly, how to look out of theirs.

These images have left shadows on our retinas; the negatives dance across the insides of our skulls. We reach out to them, call to
them, ask them not to fade away.

There is room for you here – empty pages, insides of covers, outsides of margins.

Come in.

Come explore.

We want you to get caught up in the collision of words and worlds with us. Bring your writing, bring your friends. If you find or leave something on the page, we hope that means you will come back to it.

Thank you for experiencing this journal with us.

–Lauren Silverio

Prize Winners

The Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize
Given by the Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., for the best group of poems by a graduate or undergraduate
Abigail Fagan, First Place
Marissa Stanton, Second Place
Michael Stankiewicz, Third Place
The Jennie Hackman Memorial Award for Short Fiction
Awarded in memory of Jacob and Jennie Hackman for the best work of short fiction by an undergraduate
Loriann Dozier, First Place
Stephanie Mei Koo, Second Place
Joshua Couvares, Third Place
The Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Prize
Given by David and Emily Collins for the best poem and best prose work by an undergraduate
Catherine Hires, Prose
Zachary Bradley, Poetry
The Aetna Creative Nonfiction Award
Given by the Aetna Chair in Writing to support excellence in undergraduate creative nonfiction
Eleanor Hudd, Undergraduate First Place
Abigail Fagan, Graduate First Place
The Long River Graduate Writing Award
For the best piece of writing in any genre by a graduate student
Kristina Zdravič Reardon
The Long River Art Award
Anton Nikiforov, Photography
Gloriana Gill Art Awards
Hunter French, Illustration
Rebecca Allen, Photography