SHORT STORY CONEST WINNER - AMBER WARDZALA

Congratulations to Amber Wardzala, who was selected by judge Adele Marie (@adelexmarie) as the winner of the Winter 2021 Sad Girls Club Short Story Contest! Amber Wardzala is an English—Creative Writing student at Denison University. She is Anishinaabe from White Earth Reservation and grew up in rural Lyons, WI. Her poetry and photography have been included in several regional publications, and she has received awards for her short fiction. Her short story “Realism” was adapted for orchestral performance. She has been involved in various theatre productions, appearing on stage from Albuquerque to Milwaukee. In summer 2019, she joined an ensemble to adapt and stage Nahoonkara, a novel by Peter Grandbois. She was also a teaching assistant in the summer of 2019 for the Jonathan R. Reynolds Young Writers Workshop. For the fall 2019 semester, Amber studied abroad in Bath, UK. She is co-captain of her university’s Varsity Fencing Team, and, before COVID-19, she volunteered at Licking County Humane Society in her free time. Her winning story is titled Bait. Make sure to check out her story which will be posted tomorrow on the blog at 8pm EDT. Adele also selected four runner-ups. The following stories will be posted on the blog on April 17th-April 20th at 8pm EDT.

Congratulations to :

• 1st runner up Taylor Leatrice Werner with her story Blowjobs at Johnson’s Drive-In

• 2nd runner up Cindy Pereira with her story Letters to J.

• 3rd runner up Katie Scarafiotti with her story A Piece of the Aftermath

• 4th runner up Miranda Ramirez with her story Just Another Day

Thank you to all who entered stories into the contest. There were a number of stories that stood out and many of them will be posted on the Sad Girls Club blog in the coming weeks. Finally, we want to thank Adele Marie for judging this contest. There was a fantastic selection of stories to choose from, making the task of judging this contest a challenging one! Make sure to check out her Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXcmd3yu2_YqVmK8psvOHYw We look forward to running more contests in the future and seeing more of your work. Just a reminder that general submission to the blog are still open in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Click on the Submissions tab at the top of the page for more information.