Thanks to our Guest Judge:

Literary Agent Amy Giuffrida with Belcastro Literary Agency

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

Amy’s bio:

After Amy earned her BA at the University of Kutztown and a M.Ed. from Lock Haven University, she incorporated her love of reading and books with being a middle school teacher. Amy’s biggest joy was to put the perfect book in the hands of a teen and change their minds about reading. Amy turned this love into a career by reading romance slush for a publishing company, then interned for various literary agencies, until she became an associate literary agent in 2020. In her spare time, you can find Amy either listening to, reading, or talking about books. She also loves binge-watching teen and reality TV shows—all while snuggling with one or more of her three rescue dogs.

Follow her on X: @kissedbyink

Belcastro Literary Agency: https://www.belcastroagency.com/about_us/

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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 for participating.

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 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.

We’ve enjoyed reading your stories, each and every one of them. Thank you for sharing your work with us. We hope that you continue writing and submitting so we can watch you grow as writers and storytellers, because each season is a rebirth of opportunity.

Myna’s Bio:

 

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Firefly Boys

By Myna Chang

 

I loved the fairy stories my father told me when I was little. The badger who stole checkered shirts from the clothesline, the antelope who fell in love with a rabbit named Jack. My favorite was the boy who swallowed a firefly and never died.

I’d forgotten those bedtime tales until after my junior year of college. Home for summer vacation, I needed the comfort of my childhood bed, a break from my hectic class schedule and final exam headaches. One night, I woke from a fitful sleep to find Dad in the yard, surrounded by swirling motes of brilliance. Lightning bugs, flocking to him, flitting in his hair, brushing against his upturned palms.

“Dad? What’s going on?”

He smiled and patted the ground. The insects didn’t seem to mind as I sat next to him in the dewy grass. Mom’s lilacs scented the air sweet. I wondered if she knew we were out here. A few glowbugs landed on my fingers. Their tiny legs tickled.

“You’re gonna have to explain this, Dad.”

He shifted position, stretching his legs in front of him. “Do you remember the bedtime story I used to tell you?”

“The fairy tale, about the kid and the firefly?”

Dad nodded. “Not a fairy tale. More like family history.”

I studied his profile, hesitant to speak. The idea seemed ridiculous. But those bugs! So many, and more coming all the time. They emitted so much light I could clearly see the petals of a dandelion, the sharp thorns of the rose bushes. The insects began to land on my shoulders, my crisscrossed knees.

“I was sick,” Dad continued. “My parents didn’t know what to do. The doctors couldn’t help. But then I saw these guys, twinkling outside my window.”

“And you...ate one?”

Dad laughed and shook his head. He held his hands up, splaying his fingers. Each digit shimmered, light blooming from within. The bugs shined brighter after they fluttered away from him, like they’d needed a recharge and he was the battery.

“When I told you the story, I said I ate one because it was easier for you to understand,” he said. “I mean, when you were three years old, you put everything in your mouth. Legos. Grocery receipts. A pretty rock from the garden. But not carrots; you wouldn’t eat those.”

“Still hate carrots. But that doesn’t explain why you’re glowing like an LED bulb.”

“They came to me when I needed them,” Dad said after a pause. “Filled me with their energy, their magic. Enough for a lifetime.” He shrugged. “Now I give a little back, every summer.”

More bugs landed on me, seeking contact with my skin. It should have bothered me, all those nuzzling bodies, but it was oddly soothing.

Dad’s forehead wrinkled as he considered their behavior, the way they clustered at the neck of my t-shirt and burrowed through my hair to touch my scalp.

“Looks like I might need to give a little more this year.”

Each firefly that lifted away from me was dull, diminished, unlike the streaks of radiance flying from Dad. “I don’t understand,” I said.

Dad scooted closer and draped his arm behind my back. “I should have realized,” he said. “You’ve been so tired since you got home from school. That’s how it started for me, too.”

“But I’m not...” I halted, stammering, putting the pieces together. The bone-deep exhaustion, the lethargy. Dark circles and migraines. I’d thought it was a semester-long hangover, the result of too many credit hours crammed into too short a time. Not sickness. Not some family disease.

Dad squeezed my shoulder. “Enough magic for a lifetime,” he said. His luminosity dimmed as a fresh surge of light left him, settling into me.

It took a few heartbeats for me to comprehend. Then I jerked away. “You’re fading! You can’t give it to me.”

His smile was not sad as he took my hand. “Of course, I’ll give it to you.”

He lifted his face to the night sky—and his breath caught. A cascade of winged incandescence spiraled toward us, brighter than all the stars. “But maybe I won’t have to,” he whispered.

 

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What Myna 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

Gayle’s Bio:

Gayle Beveridge writes because she loves it. It is her radiant red-sky sunset, her budding spring flowers. It is bird song and a long walk in the bush. It is whatever she wants it to be. Gayle is a past winner of the Boroondara Literary Awards. Her work has appeared in Award Winning Australian Writing, The Umbrella’s Shade, Vegemite Whiskers and Mosaic. Gayle is passionate about writing, photography, sunsets, dogs, and chocolate and with Victoria’s beautiful Bass Coast, which she now calls home. In a past life Gayle was an accountant, (don’t hold it against her), but now she is free to write.

Printable View

 

Walk with the Woman

By Gayle Beveridge

 

Walk with the woman. The door slams behind her. She parts the toasted air in a whooshed rush, ignores the sun’s needling that will tattoo bare arms and shoulders pink and then red. She stomps anger through thumping heels and pressed toes, but the concrete path rejects it. She balls it into her fists and throws it to a blue and bright, flawless sky. It boomerangs and she thinks, There is no love without trust.

Sit with the man. Alone with a television he does not hear and does not see. He feels the door slam, a rumbling vibration of bewilderment. He rolls back his words, picking at the strands of them; a forensic search for a weapon he cannot recognise. He has injured her. She is injured. He scratches at a thread in the arm of the chair, worries it until it frays and he wonders, Why?

Count back the years. Their first date amidst the swirling lights of the ferris wheel and the jangling music of the carousel. She makes her fingers sticky, picking dabs of spun sugar from a pink ball of fairy floss on a wooden stick, dabs that she sucks and dissolves on her tongue. He throws soft balls at a moving line of metal ducks, and wins her a white teddy bear, with a spotted blue bow around its neck and a cute black-button nose. They hold hands as they walk. She lets the warm blanket of his care settle on her. It is comfortable. He makes himself a barrier against the swelling crowd and he looks with suspicion at the passing men.

Observe the woman, smothering along with her dreams. Her hands tearing, pushing and pulling, against the weight of the wet blanket he has so expertly tossed. The joy of the afternoon, a ticket to a train she wants to board, bright and new and shiny, waiting at the station, its engines warming, ready to go. Partnership. An offer earned across a decade, the zenith in a lawyer’s career. A joy, unable to be contained, an eruption of excitement shared with him. And he, rejecting the hug she sought, he says, “An achievement, of course. But it will be long hours. You’ll not be wanting to spend long hours with other men.”

Imagine the man and the woman at the start. When new love is hot running lava, swallowing everything underneath, and all they see is its beautiful glow. They take the city train, stand pressed together by the commuter crowd and their own insatiable hunger. He walks her to the office, hugs her, kisses her goodbye, and savours the prying looks. She blows kisses from glossed lips across piano-player fingers. He meets her for lunch, when the air smells of car fumes and vinegar-soaked chips and tastes like success.

Hear him crack open the whisky bottle. Watch as he pours that liquid matured to colour, its clarity, and love’s, lost to time. His phone is a clay-fired brick in his pocket; the urge to call her, narcotic. The urge to explain, overwhelming. He wants only to protect her. He swigs the whiskey. It burns in his throat as his love for her burns in his heart. When it reaches his gut, he burns with hatred for the men she works with. Men in their Dolce & Gabbana suits with their luxury cars and golf club memberships.

Picture the woman. Counting grievances as her Fitbit counts steps, the replayed years, a second-rate show on a free streaming service. She squints in the glare of the sun, its arc from morning to night near complete. The path ahead is clear. When first she began to see, she wondered why he had changed, but now she understands that he is as he always was. The loss of love, the illusion of it, is a sorrow; a journey ended.

See the man rise in relief as he hears the door. “Where have you been? You were gone so long.” He waits. For an explanation. For an apology. For understanding.

Watch the woman embrace the sunset. She has a ticket to a train she wants to board, to a journey she hungers to take. “I’m accepting the partnership.” If he forbids it, she does not hear. If he grieves their parting, that will pass.

Watch the woman striding to the new dawn.

 

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What Gayle Won:

• $300.00 Cash Prize
• $25 Amazon Gift Card
• Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
• Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin

Marie’s Bio:

RUNNERS UP (In no particular order):