(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

New Blues
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)

Looking at my choices didn't help my mood, as it became apparent the jeans industry had, in my time away, transformed itself from the simple options I recalled into a dizzyingly baroque collection of esoterica, arcane shades of size and shape I couldn't even begin to elucidate.

Bill Capossere
 

Point of Departure

On a spring day in 2016, as I was halfway through my program, Alexander Kozak parked his car outside the Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, Iowa. He crossed the parking lot and entered the mall, where he shot Andrea Farrington three times in the back. He had worked as a security guard in the mall; the two had not been lovers but had exchanged text messages for some time. Police would later find knives, hatchets, and boxes of ammunition in Kozak's car. One witness described Kozak as possessing an "eerie calmness" to him as he left the crime scene.

Warren Merkel
 

The Forgiveness Words

Listen. Here is the crux of it. Though forgiveness may appear generous and gracious, it is often an imperious act of piety. You assume I desire this power to forgive. Not so. Your misperception, your presumption of a craving for superiority is very likely the source of your resentment (and the loss of our friendship).

David Sapp
 

Nicole Simpson: The Untold Story

Decapitation as an ultimate castration must therefore also explain the rage of the West when terrorists decapitate journalists. Beheading, at least in the form of guillotining, is a lot less painless than numerous other forms of execution; in fact, it probably isn't painful at all. Yet we dread decapitation more, and we are enraged when those whom we see as our implacable tribal foes do it and so audaciously videotape the deed. The French, along with everyone else, were certainly outraged when Daniel Pearl was beheaded in 2002, and who can blame them; after all, the French hadn't decapitated anyone since 1977 (an Arab, as it happens).

Larry Smith