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(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
Canada
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)
Most people in the town knew the three sisters well because there weren't any other sets of long blonde-haired triplets, and while there were a number of motherless youngsters for one reason or another, there weren't any other triplet daughters of a dead woman. They had trouble going unnoticed, wherever they went.
Sara Flemington
"You know what, kid? When I first got here, I didn't have enough money to get myself a decent blanket. A blanket. That's why I moved here, to Sydney, not one of those frost-bitten countries in the north, you know? I wouldn't survive. Back when I was in Canada, studying, it was a minus gazillion degrees. I had no heating. All I could do was walk. Walk the length of my flat, walk and walk back. To keep the body heat up. Sitting wasn't an option."
Azka Hameed
In college you made a mission of taking the fun out of frat boys' parties, and to your surprise you got laid anyway. Now there were girls who had started to think like their mothers, and suddenly you were doling out truth as though you'd invented it, finding your reflection in mirrors everywhere. This was your time, despite the occasional death threats from boys who wore their hats backwards, the muscles of the short ones so big they walked funny.
S. A. Renschler
It certainly seemed to be a cultural truth that if you stuck to the far ends of the spectrum, you created more heat. Was it human nature to be driven toward the highs and lows of the human experience? Perhaps. Maybe the comfortable middle was just that—too comfortable, in a time where comfort wasn't what people wanted. They wanted to ride the roller coaster; they wanted to be dashed around on the rocks.
Noah Pohl
Then one Saturday night, Kirk drove his Gremlin down Broadway and sneaked into the Ryman Auditorium in time for the 11:30 set of the Grand Ole Opry. As Marty Robbins closed the show with "El Paso," the woman seated next to Kirk spilled a Mountain Dew on his leg. "My name is Valerie," she said, patting his leg with her handkerchief. "From out of nowhere, Felina has found me," sang Marty.
Mark Williams
Two Winners and a Two-Time Loser: Original Transcripts from the Federalist Echo Chamber
"We're all naked, Marilyn even in a parka, MacArthur with his back country civil war twisty corn cob pipe dissing me at Wake Island, but I was the better pol, and the more Shakespearean. The general had been right at Inchon and was certain the Chinese would not risk crossing the river, so go ahead boys, make the quick sojourn; he didn't count on the huge numbers of long marchers still tough and unquestioning in their quilted uniforms assembled just across the river, the temperature many degrees below zero in the high mountain area around the Chosin Reservoir when they poured in and our forces were strung out in light uniforms and surrounded.
Chris Daly
