2022 Table of Contents
Introductions
Michael Dowdy
Editor’s Note
Kathie Collins & Paul Reali
A Welcome from Charlotte Lit’s Co-Founders
Poetry
1st Place:
Amie Whittemore
The Peony
2nd Place:
Junious Ward
Imagine Me
3rd Place:
AE Hines
Find a Friend
Honorable Mentions:
Shannon C. Ward
The Birds of Lake Norman
Cynthia Robinson Young
Her Name Was Theosa
Amie Whittemore
If No One Opens Us, We’ll Thirst
Steve Cushman
The Last Exxon in Oregon
Additional Finalists:
Tennessee Hill
Birch Tree Summer
Jenny Hubbard
In the year of our Lord, 1621, my husband paints me as a nun
Barbara Campbell
Last Night I Made Love with a Horse
Richard Allen Taylor
La Chambre d’écoute, 1952
Junious Ward
Love as an Object Lesson, Cornfield
Yvette R. Murray
The Opposite of Charleston is Pittsburgh
Wayne Johns
Patriots
Sara Beck
pixie
Fred Pond
The southern hemisphere of longing and regret
Barry Peters
Spring, Morning
Semi-finalists:
AE Hines
After the Adoption
Tori Reynolds
Bagatelle
Barbara Campbell
Behind the Purple Lilacs My Mother and the Milkman Would Have Sex…
Emily W Pease
Bertha
Lucinda Trew
camouflage
Jessica Lee Richardson
Cyanide Slinger Swing
Tina Barr
Deployed
Richard Allen Taylor
I Inherited Hundreds of Candles
Annie Woodford
In the Dark I Light a Little Fire
Caren Stuart
of wangechi mutu’s fantastic journey
Shannon C. Ward
The Resolution
Gretchen Steele Pratt
Totality
Kathy Goodkin
Two Dreams About the Moon
Poetry Judges:
Jessica Jacobs
Ordinary Immanence
Nickole Brown
Prayer to Be Still and Know
Fiction
1st Place:
Dustin M. Hoffman
This Picture of Your House
2nd Place:
Pamela Wright
Breath in the Body
3rd Place:
Janna Zonder
Who Kills the Bugs for the Dalai Lama?
Honorable Mentions:
Pamela Wright
Hallelujah By and By
Maryann Hopper
New Brunswick Enigma
Fiction Judge:
Ron Rash
The Belt
Nonfiction
1st Place:
Karen Salyer McElmurray
In Varanasi
2nd Place:
Tracy Rothschild Lynch
When Organ Becomes Metaphor
3rd Place:
Matt Cheek
Lucas
Nonfiction Judge:
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Día de Muertos
Flash
1st Place:
Amber Wheeler Bacon
The Damage
2nd Place:
Kacie Faith Kress
Lesbian Communion
3rd Place:
Michael Banks
Troubles No More
Honorable Mentions:
Amber Wheeler Bacon
General Sorrows
David Dixon
Going Home
Flash Judge:
Tara Campbell
The Loveliest Thing