Thanks to our Guest Judge:

Literary Agent Erin Clyburn

WOW was honored to have guest judge literary agent Erin Clyburn choose this season’s top winners. Thank you, Erin, for sharing your time and efforts to make these contestants’ dreams come true!

Erin’s bio:

Erin joined The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency as Associate Literary Agent in 2019 after an internship and apprenticeship with a boutique literary agency. She has worked as a copy editor and recipe editor in the magazine industry and was general manager and director of the collection development for Turtleback Books. She received her BA in English Literature from Mississippi State University and her MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. When not working, Erin loves hiking, cooking, traveling, painting, and trying to keep her three rabbits, Felix, Agnes, and Valentino, from chewing up every baseboard in the house.

Erin’s page at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency: www.jdlit.com/erin-clyburn

Follow her on Twitter: @erin_clyburn

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We want to thank each and every one of you for sharing your wonderful stories with our guest judges this season. We know it takes a lot to hit the send button! While we’d love to give every contestant a prize, just for your writing efforts, that wouldn’t be much of a competition. One of the hardest things we do after a contest ends is to confirm that someone didn’t place in the winners’ circle. But, believe it when we say that every one of you is a true winner.

Every writer has been a gracious participant through the whole process, from the beginning of one season to the next. We’ve written emails to authors, agents, and publicists who have donated books to our contest, and we’ve shared our delight regarding the true sportsmanship among our contestants. It doesn’t matter if it’s one writer who placed or another who tried but didn’t; all writers are courteous, professional, and wonderful extensions of WOW! Women On Writing’s team. Writers’ stories and e-mails fill us with enthusiasm.

Kudos to all writers who entered, whether you won or not, you’re still a winner for participating.

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To recap our current process, we have a roundtable of 12+ judges who blindly score equally formatted submissions based on: Subject, Content, Technical, and Overall Impression (Style). That’s the first step of the process. If a contestant scores well on the first round, they receive an e-mail notification that she passed the initial judging phase. The second round judging averages out scores and narrows down the top 20 entries. From this point, our guest judge helps to determine the First, Second, and Third Place Winners, followed by the Runners Up.

As with any contest, judging so many talented writers is not a simple process. With blind judging, all contestants start from the same point, no matter the skill level, experience, or writing credentials. It’s the writer’s story and voice that shines through, along with the originality, powerful and clear writing, and the writer’s heart.

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We’ve enjoyed reading your stories, each and every one of them. The WOW! Women On Writing judges take time to read them all. We recognize names of previous contestants, writers familiar with our style. We enjoy getting to know you through your writing and e-mailing. Remember that each one of you is a champion in our book. We hope that you continue to enter so we can watch you grow as writers and storytellers, because each season is a rebirth of opportunity.

Rachel’s Bio:

Rachel Singh is a writer and artist who loves assembling, whether she is working with strings of words, moving images, or yards of fabric. She is drawn to an array of art forms including literature, fashion, film, and dance, but not singing, which, despite her last name, she avoids at all costs. She has written blog posts for The Atlanta History Center and news articles for Paste Magazine. Fiction writing has always been her first love, and she’s slowly beginning to share her work in that realm. More of her creative projects, including short films, can be found on her website, rachelsingh26.wixsite.com/website, and you can also connect with her on Instagram at @rachelsinghsong. In the real world, you’re likely to spot her in coffee shops or bookstores across her home base of Atlanta, GA.

 

Printable View

 

Rotations

By Rachel Singh

 

The day had passed by in bed; she couldn’t bring herself to get ready till she was supposed to be on the road. Her co-worker handed her a bottle of wine and a wine key, knowing she always forgot hers, and sent her off to table 44. Across the room, her manager tapped a non-existent watch on his wrist and glared pointedly. She mouthed, “Sorry,” and walked to the patio with her head down.

The women at 44 were chatty, fresh off a tennis court at the nice apartments down the block. The key went into the cork at a crooked angle. The players debated about topspin while she struggled with the bottle, a drop of red blotching the table like a crime scene.

She wiped it up, apologized, then greeted a man sitting alone. His eyes were unreadable, the afternoon sun coating his glasses in an opaque glare. He answered her inquiries as to how he was doing with a not impolite but certainly short answer. She poured him more wine and went inside, where the bartenders poured drinks in delicate glasses that sent light refracting around the room, momentary flirts, gracing each table with rainbow speckled luminescence. Out the street, tires squealed as a car evaded a collision. A couple looked up in shock, one of them dropping their fork. She caught it without hesitation. Accidents happened outside the building all the time. She put the fork in the dish pit and brought out a clean one.

A regular sat down at the bar. They typed at pristine desks as light loomed high, plummeted down the elevator as the sun set, destined for the third seat from the door. They ordered voraciously, sending the bartenders in an infinite route back and forth with sazeracs in their hands, and always tipped well. She imagined that type of life for herself, for a moment, then remembered her prospects probably wouldn’t lend itself to affording a place such as this.

A man, lost, walked in asking for directions to a pharmacy. She sent him back the way he came, explaining he needed to cross the street. He shuffled with a hunchback like a snail’s shell throwing odd shadows onto the sidewalk, and she hoped he’d find his way.

“Hands,” someone called out.

The couple had ordered clams, her most dreaded order. The plate was too hot, so she held her breath and thought about snowmen, thought about how most of the dollars she grovelled and smiled with tired eyes for were going to her landlord anyway. The couple, fresh forks in hand, gazed lovingly at each other. She pictured herself in one of those seats but it was too much of a myth to even imagine.

Folding roll ups made the time pass. Fold, place silver, roll. The motion was hypnotic, and she realized she had let her tables marinate too long in the summer sun. She rushed out, hoping the tips wouldn’t reflect how bad she was at her job.

Almost everyone was gone, checked out by her more reliable co-worker. Receipts flapped in a light wind. The man was still there, a strange expression on his face, as if he had just witnessed something harmonic.

“The sun just passed right behind that building,” he said, pointing across the street. The sun, wine, or both had melted his disposition a bit. “It happened in a minute.”

She was silent, stunned he was speaking to her in this manner. He laughed faintly. “It’s moments like these when you realize, we really are rotating,” he said. The intersection was quiet, headlights clicking on yellow against a burnt orange sky. She had never thought of the slip of the sun that way.

“I’ll take the check.”

She brought him his bill and swiped his credit card, wondering if he knew that his remark, for a moment, was solace, a spare shoulder for Atlas to rest his weight on. His pen swooped across the receipt, and he bid her adieu. Outside, the streetlights took on the bill, illumination engineered. The rest of the night passed in a haze, with steps lighter than before, as if gravity had been reset. She thought if she moved in sequence with the earth, then maybe she’d get to where she was going, where she was supposed to be.

 

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What Rachel Won:

• $400.00 Cash Prize
• $25 Amazon Gift Card
• Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
• Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin

Rachel’s Bio:

Rachel O'Cleary first came to writing as a six-year-old chronicler of family vacations, and has been writing in some form ever since. She studied English with a creative writing emphasis at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and now lives with her family in Ireland, squeezing her obsession for flash fiction into the spaces between school runs. She is currently planning her first novella-in-flash. You can find a list of her published work at rachelocleary.wordpress.com, and she occasionally tweets @RachelOCleary1.

RUNNERS UP (In no particular order):