We're excited to announce that the winner of our 2025 Creative Nonfiction Contest and $2000 prize is Shelley Pacholok! Her essay "How Not to Say Good-Bye to Your Professor" is featured in the upcoming autumn issue of The Fiddlehead (no.305).
Shelley Pacholok’s current manuscript narrates a personal journey of brain injury. Her autoethnographic writing appears in Prairie Fire and the brain-injury anthology Impact. She was longlisted for the 2024 Upstart & Crow writer’s residency and was the second-place winner in the PRISM International Creative Non-Fiction Contest.
"How Not to Say Good-Bye to Your Professor” — which turns out to be by Shelley Pacholok — haunted me the way an exemplary CNF piece should. Her essay weaves personal narrative with step-by-step instructions for navigating a catastrophe — a fitting structure for a sociologist who studied disasters but could not prepare for her own State of Emergency. Throughout the piece I was mesmerized by the author’s attention to craft: fine sentences, deft pacing, understated irony. With all that to the essay’s credit, I knew it was up to the ending. Could a story that held me spellbound maintain its grip right up to the last word? I read the final section aloud; the last line caught in my throat. I realized, all at once, how it would feel to lose so much. Reader, be prepared. “How Not to Say Good-Bye to Your Professor” is about a woman forced to part ways, suddenly and unexpectedly, with a life she worked hard for. But this piece isn’t an inventory of loss. It’s a report documenting how a survivor stepped into her power as a magician. A writer. An artist."
— Nicole Breit, Contest Judge
Thank you to all who entered the creative nonfiction contest and congratulations to the fourteen finalists. And thanks again to our judge, Nicole Breit!
Keep an eye out for when our autumn issue goes live to read an excerpt from "How Not to Say Good-Bye to Your Professor"
You can pre-order Issue 305 Autumn 2025 now!
Order Issue 305 - Autumn 2025 (Canadian Addresses)
Order Issue 305 - Autumn 2025 (International Addresses)
