Written by: Hannah Murray Winner of the 2026 Aetna Prize for Creative Nonfiction The sun hangs high in the sky when our car escapes narrowly between gods closing stone hands. A speedy Red Ford slips between mountainous fingers, car darting in, out, and over the seven rock ridges that encircle…
Category: Creative Nonfiction
Arboreal: A Field Log
By Zeynep Özer Winner of The Edwin Way Teale Award for Nature Writing 1 There is a tree on my way home. It’s planted towards the middle of the sidewalk. The road, otherwise pedestrian, makes a sharp curve around it so that one would have to change their course significantly…
Little Loves (2024)
By Gabrielle WincherhernWinner of The Aetna Creative Nonfiction Award On some level, you always thought love was going to be the thing that saved you. Maybe it started with the fairy tales, the movies. The Princess and the Pauper. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Barbie and the Diamond Castle….
“Stealing Paris” by Michaela Barnes
In 1982, I stole some beautiful things in Paris. Looking back, I realized I learned how to maintain my composure after earlier failed attempts at thieving. In 1967, I was five when I was lined up with my five older siblings and accused of throwing a half-opened can of Spam behind a box of gift-wrapping paper in the basement
“A Night and a Day in Hibbing, Minnesota” by Nick Rommel
My introduction to Hibbing, Minnesota took place by a gate at the end of a pine needle-strewn forest road, where I met Steve, an elderly man whose clothing clung to his body like an afterthought, making a last-ditch effort to contain the ruddy skin and wispy white hair jostling for exposure at his every missed button, torn hole, and sandal gap
“When Treading Water Above a Bottomless Pit” by John Guillemette Jr.
Contest Winner for the Edwin Way Teale Award for Nature Writing (2022) I moved to Oregon during the dreadful forest fires of 2020. I moved out of Oregon during the even more dreadful forest fires of 2021. I came and went in smoke so thick that nobody noticed. As my…
The Road to Hell By August Jones (2017)
When I was seven, we made poetry books in school. I wrote two poems about my childhood dog, one about my grandpa, and one about 9/11. The rest were gibberish. On the cover, I drew broken hearts, storm clouds, a syringe, and my mom crying in the den. My dog…
Splitting By Alyssa Palazzo (2017)
Left I. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. A slender Italian with olive skin and a swollen stomach sits across from me. We are on a train rushing to Manhattan, and her feet are propped on the red duffel that sits at my knees. Her long…
i think i dreamed you by Aryanah Haydu (2017)
day 1 We met and though I was elsewhere involved, I knew that he would be the sweetest thing my eyes would ever reach. He had a long term girlfriend but still I couldn’t take my eyes from his toiled blonde hair those anesthetic blue eyes. He looked full to…
Guilt Treatment by Noah Bukowski (2017)
Aetna Creative Nonfiction Award Undergraduate Winner (2017) The form said that every article of clothing we wore that day had to be white, even our undergarments. My dad wasn’t into this kind of thing, so he had normal clothes on and was going to drive around for most of the…
