Thanks to our guest judge:

Literary Agent Emily Williamson

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

Emily’s bio:

Emily Williamson represents a variety of projects in non-fiction and fiction, working with major publishers, university presses, and boutique imprints alike to find the perfect home for her clients’ work. She began her editing career in 2011 with Chrysalis Editorial in Washington, D.C. and founded Williamson Literary in 2016, driven by the desire to help great writers achieve their publishing goals. She has earned degrees from American University (1997) and Johns Hopkins University (2012).

As a writer, she understands the investment of time and heart it takes to follow this challenging path. It is the core of Williamson Literary—to support the careers of dedicated writers who deserve to see their ideas and imaginings realized. Williamson Literary is also about building relationships: agent-author, agent-publisher, author-publisher.

In the past, Emily spent fifteen years as an archaeologist traveling all over the US and abroad in search of many things…sometimes finding nothing. It is this varied, nomadic past that has influenced her own writing and her particular interests as an agent. Emily does other things. She is a poet, a painter, loves the outdoors, traveling, playing with her nutty Border Collie, doing CrossFit, and watching football…not all at once. She is a native of New Jersey, cuts her own firewood, and is one of those annoying people who can’t eat gluten.

Williamson Literary Agency: https://williamsonlit.com/about/

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Ari’s Bio:

 

Printable View

 

The Pomegranate Tree

By Ari Honarvar

 

“Why do they hate us?” I ask, the breeze stroking my tear-stained face.

“They don’t even know us. How could they hate us?” Dad says, passing me his cigarette.

We have a secret tradition in which I finish off his cigarettes on the rare occasion he smokes. Never mind that I’m a nine-year-old girl in Shiraz. I take a few puffs and squash the butt on the edge of the fountain. We resume our walk around the willow trees and the rose bushes, holding hands.

“What is it like to lose your dad?” I ask.

“It’s really hard,” he shakes his head.

I think of Leila. Earlier, my entire third-grade class had gone silent as she entered the room, her face showing long, angry scratches. Would I claw my own face if I lost someone? We’re good friends, and I hate it that I wasn’t there when she found out. It was even worse that I didn’t know what to say. So I just sat there, staring at my notebook, the phantom mosquito sound of the drone buzzing in my ear. I had heard that sound yesterday. Before my mother yelled for us to go into the basement. Before the explosion. Before the stench of the smoke. Before Dad ran out of the house barefoot.

Leila’s father was visiting his sick mother in Karaj when a different drone got him last week. It also killed 41 kids at a school nearby. Even though by now we’re used to going to funerals, it doesn’t get easier.

Dad stops to touch a dewdrop resting on the petal of a pomegranate blossom. Last autumn, this once bountiful pomegranate tree didn’t fruit at all. I overheard my Aunt Dana say it’s the toxic remnants from drone rockets that are poisoning the groundwater.

Dad lifts his index finger gingerly, but the dewdrop bursts anyway.

“Dad, what’s toxic remnants?”

“What makes the pomegranate tree shed blooms like tears. What sends away birds who refuse to watch the carnage,” he says, his eyes scanning the clear blue of the empty sky.

Dad is a poet. I make a mental note to Google the definition later. When I grow up, I want to be an environmental engineer like my Aunt Dana.

Dad tugs on my hand and turns to the row of willow trees. I fall into step next to him, thinking of Leila, who doesn’t have a father anymore.

“Dad, if they don’t hate us, then why do they kill us?”

He is about to say something, but instead he changes course so as not to disturb an ant caravan. I follow suit.

I remember when I was four, we had come across a similar caravan on our walk. I had zeroed in on the biggest ant and crushed it with a rock.

“Why did you do that, Ooji?” Dad asked.

“I killed the big scary dragon.” I looked up at him. From the look of concern in his eyes, I suspected I had done something wrong. I wanted to cry. Seeing my trembling lips, he sat down in front of me and touched his forehead to mine.

“Hey!” he said, his face brightening with a sudden smile. “Do you wanna know what I see?” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled me onto his lap and pointed at the ants. “You see that one? That's Sara. She is the oldest daughter. She likes to tell jokes. Everyone always laughs at Sara’s jokes. This one right here is Mama Darya. She makes the best baklava. And that little one over there, that’s Niku. She’s the youngest of all, just like you. She loves drawing with crayons. Do you know what Niku does with her crayons after she’s done drawing a picture?”

I shook my head.

“She eats them! Who else does that?” he said, tickling me.

I laughed at first, but then looked at the rock.

“That was Daddy Ilyas,” Dad said softly. “He was about to go to the store and buy Niku some more crayons.”

***

We’ve circled back to the fountain. Dad grabs the cigarette butt with his free hand. I watch his tired face. New gray hairs, like weeds in our overgrown garden, have sprouted on his head. I wonder if his ears, like mine, have stretched to become enormous—always listening for the buzz of the approaching drone. But I keep that to myself. Instead, I squeeze his hand and let him lead me through the garden again.

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What Ari 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

Elizabeth’s Bio:

Elizabeth is a traditionally published author of The Secrets That Save Us and The Cheech Room, and a historical nonfiction novel, The Final Mission, a Boy, a Pilot and a World at War. She has written numerous newspaper and magazine articles over the years. She has won several writing awards, including Bethlehem Writers Circle Best in Prose 2018, Writers Digest runner-up in Memoir 2019, Millennium runner-up for Best in Prose 2023, and Reedsy first-place award for two short stories and two short-listed. Her first winning story appears in 2025 Reedsy Anthology. She received the Miriam Chaiken Award for Best in Prose 2025, and is the 2026 guest judge for same. In 2025, she won Women on Writing (WOW) Q3 Essay Contest Award 2025, as well as 3^rd place in WOW 2026 Q1 Flash Fiction.

Aside from writing, Elizabeth is a Nurse Practitioner who loves spending time with her kids and her four-legged antidepressants. She doubts any of her 6 adult kids have ever read her work – maybe her cat Seuss based on his pedigree.

Printable View

 

Downloading Hemingway

By Elizabeth Hoban

 

When someone dies, people bring things. Mostly food and alcohol, though edibles and Xanax circulate like breath mints. Personally, you would prefer cash.

The repast is held at their mansion. The family fears the obituary announcement might lure burglars if the house sits empty for too long. Their ornate front doors stand wide open for the taking. Seems anyone is welcome. Purses and jackets, along with your own black silk scarf, hang from a mahogany coat rack in the foyer. This family is not paranoid; they’re cavalier - pompous.

You drift among overdressed strangers who would rather be elsewhere, hearing the same lines repeated like a script. If you need anything at all…. They clasp the widow’s palms between theirs, a hand-sandwich. Just call. We’re here for you.

These people don’t want to help. They attend out of obligation. And they all know the unspoken truth. The deceased 29-year-old, whom they pretend to mourn, had been driving drunk, as usual -only this time he killed himself and an innocent man in the process. There were no legal consequences. The widow’s father, a police detective, made that part of the investigation disappear.

Outside, a cloudless sky mocks the occasion. You ache for the sun’s warmth, for anything other than drawn curtains and indifferent shadows. A week ago, you were happily married and six weeks pregnant. In one unimaginable day, you lost everything—emptiness, where two futures had been. Your life turned sepia, not unlike an old film reel stuck on a loop. There’s nothing left but your late mother’s dilapidated farmhouse hundreds of miles away. The pain is a shard of glass lodged in your gut. 

If you have nothing worth dying for, why live? Grief doesn’t diminish; it mutates. Yours quickly hardened into anger.

After the accident and the subsequent miscarriage, you downloaded a photograph from Instagram, posted two months earlier: the widow and her husband holding their new baby girl. You studied it obsessively, and there in the background, you noticed the neighboring house with the fenced yard and connecting gate, an oversized doghouse with the dog’s name across the front.

Hemingway became your solution.

Casually touring the vast house, you check and recheck your pockets. Your car is parked a block away. You should leave, run. You don’t. That photo replays - the widow beside the man who killed your husband and cost you your child - the neighbor’s yard - Hemingway. No one knows you’ve been visiting the sweet, rambunctious lab the past few nights, learning his favorite treats. Maybe once you’re settled in the farmhouse, you’ll get a dog.

From the kitchen window, you spot the widow reclining beneath an oak tree. She’s doing her best imitation of Jackie Onassis: fitted black suit, freshwater pearls, oversized sunglasses. Her hair is colored and coiffed as if it were her wedding day. You watch her slip pills from an amber bottle and wash them down with something that isn’t water. She never glances at the baby monitor on the table.

The warm September afternoon draws the guests outside. You join them in the backyard. While offering condolences to the widow, who couldn’t care less who you are, you lean in and quickly complete a critical task. Then, you stroll the lawn, letting dog treats fall from your dress pockets, and slowly make your way to the adjoining gate.

Hemingway sits on the other side, tail wagging, unwittingly written into this scene. Quiet as a light switch, you unlatch the gate.

He doesn’t wait for an invitation. He bounds into the yard, gobbling the trail of treats, then charges a food platter. Chaos ensues: shouting, overturned chairs, raucous laughter. The amused widow doesn’t notice the monitor is off. 

Surreptitiously, you slink back inside the house. Empty, except for the sleeping infant you found earlier in a back room.

You gently lift her from the playpen, inhaling her scent. She’s like warm milk and fresh cotton. Her breath flutters against your collarbone, and without waking, she roots once, then conforms to you, warm as the sunlight you’ve craved.

Methodically, you retrieve your black scarf from the foyer and wrap it snugly around the two of you. Without hesitation, you exit through those garish front doors, still wide open for the taking.

Moments later, you’re on the street, walking toward your packed car, a new weight against your chest while the much heavier weight you’ve been carrying drifts away.

When someone dies, people bring things. But sometimes, people take things too.

 

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What Elizabeth 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

Connie’s Bio:

RUNNERS UP: