Thanks to our guest judge:

Literary Agent Kristina Pérez

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

Kristina’s bio:

Kristina has been a bookworm for as long as she can remember and has a decade of experience in publishing as both an author and an agent. She was born and raised in the Big Apple by an Argentine dad and a Norwegian mom, speaking three languages at home. Her multicultural upbringing instilled her with a profound desire to experience the world and she has now lived in nine countries on three continents.

Her first great literary love was Arthurian legend which led her to reading Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic studies for her BA and completing a PhD in Medieval Literature at the University of Cambridge. In between she pursued an MA in French Cultural Studies at Columbia University and then worked as a translator and women’s rights lobbyist in Paris. Kristina switched gears into journalism after her PhD, heading out to China in the run up to the 2008 Olympics.

She has held positions at the National University of Singapore and the University of Hong Kong. Her academic work is rooted in feminist, queer and postcolonial theory and she remains keenly interested in those fields. Her monograph, The Myth of Morgan la Fey was published by Palgrave Macmillan, using feminist psychoanalysis to recenter the famed sorceress at the heart of the Arthurian tradition.

Kristina has also written several novels for young adults. The Sweet Black Waves trilogy (Imprint/Macmillan) draws on Kristina’s expertise in medieval literature to retell the legend of Tristan and Isolde, while The Tesla Legacy (Tor Teen) reimagines the classic superhero origin story with a precocious female scientist at its helm. Kristina’s first novel for adults, The Many Lies of Veronica Hawkins is forthcoming from Little, Brown UK.

Being both an agent and an author allows Kristina to fully guide her clients through every step of the publishing process. She loves launching debut authors’ careers as well as working with mid-career authors looking for new challenges. Kristina sees each client relationship as a true partnership in which they develop the right strategy for a client’s career together. Author care is paramount and she prides herself on using her multifaceted understanding of the industry to help her clients achieve their goals. She is eager to work with writers from around the globe.

Pérez Literary & Entertainment Agency: https://www.perezliterary.com/about-us/the-team/

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Mihaela Bio:

 

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The Snow Woman

By Mihaela Stoicovici

 

In the far northern mountains of Japan, an old story says that sometimes, the unforgiving blizzard sounds like a woman crying. It is Yuki Onna, the Snow Woman, searching the mountains for a loving heart to warm her cold, frozen body. A Japanese folktale.

Haruo Yamaguchi was a very successful lawyer, living the life he had always dreamed of, winning the hearts and minds of people, and having a social recognition only a few could afford in the big city of Tokyo. He was both envied and admired, but no matter how much success he had, he always felt that something was missing. This feeling haunted him for years, though he kept it at bay with more work, more success.

His wife, Akiko, a true Aphrodite, always enchanted him with her beauty. But she couldn’t follow him into that place he rarely acknowledged, where a deep and inexplicable longing waited for him.

To his despair, for about two years, an intriguing pain in his left leg wouldn’t go away. No doctor could explain it, no medication could ease it.

When Haruo almost gave up trying, one doctor suggested that the problem could be in his mind and that he should see a psychiatrist. How ironic! Haruo had always considered himself open-minded. A man of facts and logic, of deep analysis and intuition, he always tried to grasp more from the world. However, he agreed to be checked into a famous sanatorium, deep in the mountains north of Tokyo.

Other than a few hours a day dealing with the hospital routine, he was free to take long walks in the forest nearby. That year, the winter brought heavy snow, and strangely, he felt attracted to the cold beauty of the forest despite the freezing temperatures or the silly warning of one of the patients, who spent an entire afternoon telling him about the legend of Yuki Onna, the Snow Woman—unforgiving and relentless, looking to lure a soul into the mountains. The people in the nearby village, who supplied winter vegetables for the sanatorium, told him that this year, the winter was colder than usual, and the blizzard struck without warning, killing anyone who remained stranded in the mountains.

But every time he stepped into the white world or found himself in the perfect solitude of the forest, he felt better, longing for more, no matter how dangerous. It was as if the forest had put a spell on him—enchanted by the changing light in the snow, the trees bending under its weight, losing track of time and only coming inside when he could no longer feel his toes or fingers.

One day, he ventured too far and lost his way, deep in the forest, surrounded by hypnotic glitters and strange shadows in the snow. Then the blizzard struck. The wind howled as snowflakes whipped across his face like tiny daggers. Desperate, he stumbled through the storm until he found an old wooden shelter, half-buried in snow. Shivering, he crouched inside, barely able to move.

Through the open doorway, blurred by wind and ice, he saw her.

Yuki Onna.

She emerged from the storm, pale as death, her long black hair flowing like silk against the wind. She drifted closer until he could feel the icy strands brush his face. Her frozen fingers traced his cheek.

She whispered in his ear. Everything went dark.

He woke up in the sanatorium bed, nurses rushing nearby to warm him up, the doctor telling him how lucky he was to have been discovered, in the back of the sanatorium, just in time, by a nurse.

He got better but couldn’t escape that memory—of Yuki Onna touching his cheek and whispering in his ear. That forgotten space inside him widened, and he found himself remembering old things, like when he was a child playing in the backyard of his grandparents' house.

In the next few days, his wife, Akiko, would come to take him home.

He was struck by how much she had changed. She was still the same beautiful woman—but different. There was something new in her, something colder, more distant. And yet, inexplicably, she was more alluring than ever.

She leaned in close.

Her hair brushed his cheek.

Haruo froze. Fear and longing tangled in his chest.

She whispered in his ear.

And his heart opened—welcoming the wild and dangerous embrace of winter.

 

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What Mihaela 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

Sophie’s Bio:

Sophie is a Jewish/Chicana writer from Los Angeles, CA whose short plays have been accepted into festivals and competitions nationwide. Her short stories have both placed and received honorable mentions in contests sponsored by Reedsy, WOW! Women Writing, and Fractured Lit. Several of her full-length plays have been shortlisted for various festivals and her play Rosa will have a reading by the Playwright’s Arena in July 2025. While she loves to experiment with genre, style, and tone, her writing primarily focuses on the social justice issues she is passionate about. She is adamant about putting Latine characters at the forefront of almost all her stories, showcasing the layered diversity within Latinidad and more specifically Jewish/Latinidad. A Small Piece of Altadena was first written and submitted to a short story contest sponsored by Reedsy. 

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A Small Piece of Altadena

By Sophie Goldstein

 

Sol stood in her living room staring.

In the corners of the house she could see 50 years of memories etched into the walls.

She walked toward the room she grew up in.

She could see herself as a child learning to walk, her father’s arms open, her brother trying to sabotage the moment by sticking his foot in her mouth.

She looked to her left, where her older sister’s room had been. A place of refuge for all three siblings. They would crowd her sister’s room and read illicit books and smoke weed out the window and play music their parents didn’t know they had.

She looked to the kitchen and could smell the matzo ball soup that was made every Hanukkah and Passover and the arroz con pollo that her grandmother would make and the chile con carne her grandfather would make. 

She could still hear the important conversations that had happened at the kitchen table. The Sex talk. The Where Are You Going to College talk. The How Dare You Did That Thing, Now You’re Grounded Talk. The Do as I say, Not as I Do, talk. The I Love You talk. The other I Love You talk.

She could see them playing games at the table. Her father teaching her poker at five years old. Teaching her how to bluff and bet and how her mother pretended to disapprove. 

She looked outside into the backyard and could still see the whole family on Sundays as they cooked carne asada and drank beer and talked politics as the kids ran around playing tag and falling over and laughing hysterically because someone said the word ‘fart.’

She could see the tree that had been there before they moved in. The tree that had been there before anyone moved in. Before any of the houses were built. The tree that had that one branch where she would sit and read and lay back looking at the sky.

She could see her parents dancing in the living room. Her mom swaying smoothly to Tracy Chapman as she dusted the furniture.

She could see her family squeezed together on the couch as they opened presents and watched movies and played Scrabble.

She could hear the arguments that occurred in every room.

She could hear the secrets that were shared between her and her brother in that corner of the house by the small bookcase. It’s where she told him she was gay. It’s where he told her he didn’t care.

She could see her sister watching Sound of Music for the millionth time, making everyone join in for every single song.

She could hear English and Spanish and Hebrew. 

She could see and hear so many things and she didn’t know how she was supposed to pack up the walls and the tables and the ceilings that were so full of these moments.

How was she supposed to take it all with her?

Her phone screamed at her that it was time to go.

So, she grabbed her father’s precious books. And her mother’s paintings. She grabbed the photos that she could. She grabbed the Menorah that had been in their family for no one knew how long. She grabbed the small La Virgen made out of wood and the green Buddha her grandfather had owned.

She grabbed.

She grabbed.

She grabbed.

And her phone screamed at her again that it was time to go. That she had to leave NOW.

And she packed up her car.

And she saw her neighbor Rodney standing in his front yard, looking at his house, holding bags and bags of things. She knew what was going through his mind. She thought about how his family had lived in that house for at least four generations. They had just had a conversation last week about how their little city held what was left of the middle class. About the rich Black history it carried and how precious Black generational wealth was.

And as she drove away, she looked into the rearview mirror and could still see the roof of her house through the thick smoke.

And she could see her family standing there one late summer night years ago, looking at the stars and the moon and the beautiful navy-blue sky and the Gabrielino trail leading up into the mountains making them feel like they were on the edge of the world.

 

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What Sophie 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

Isabel’s Bio:

RUNNERS UP: