In the 25 years since it was given to me as a birthday present, I’ve recommended Time and the Art of Living more often than The Sixteen Pleasures or Mao’s Last Dancer.
Please join The Fiddlehead, in partnership with FROSTival, Fredericton's Annual Winter Festival, as we celebrate the launch of our 2024 Winter issue! With readings from contributors: Jody Chan, Melissa DaCosta Brown (Winner of our 2023 Fiction Contest), and Shane Neilson. There will also be a special in-person reading from UNB's 2023-24 Writer-in-Residence, Jaspreet Singh.
We're excited to announce that Melissa DaCosta Brown is the winner of our 2023 Fiction Contest and $2000 prize! Her story "Husbands" will be featured in the upcoming Winter issue of The Fiddlehead (FH298).
Melissa DaCosta Brown is a graduate of Duke University and has a masters in Journalism from Northwestern University. She worked for MSNBC and ABC News affiliates. Her short stories have been published in Waccamaw, Subnivean, Ponder Review. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Lascaux Prize.
Excerpt
"Husbands" by Melissa DaCosta Brown
Winner of the 2023 Fiction Prize
The Raw Light of Morning, Shelly Kawaja’s debut novel and winner of the $12,500 BMO Winterset Award in 2022 for outstanding literary work by a Newfoundlander or Labradorian, is at the same time a compelling story of domestic violence, poverty, and trauma, and a 1990s western Newfoundland coming-of-age character study of a young woman of remarkable resilience. This is Laurel’s story, and she is 14 in the opening scene, and forced to intervene to protect her mother from life-threatening violence.
