2023 TWFest Fiction Contest Finalists
Congratulations to our 2023 Fiction Contest winner, runners-up, and finalists. Thank you Timothy Schaffert for being our judge this year and to Dylan Church, our contest coordinator.
Sabrynne Buchholz is a writer, artist, musician, tea-enthusiast, and avid bug friend. Sabrynne is at home in Colorado, where she thoroughly enjoys the snowy winter weather and opportunities to create. She graduated from Colorado State University with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary liberal arts and a minor in English. Through academic exploration, she gained editorial and research experience and it was here that she discovered a love of creative writing. Sabrynne has taken to using writing as a means of investigating and learning about the world she inhabits. Her work has been published in print and online nationally and internationally, appearing in the Greyrock Review, Bloom Magazine, Studio OUCH! Gazette, among others.
Gabino Cabanilla is a graduate of City University in Seattle, WA and is currently working on a creative writing certificate at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program. Gabino was a 2022 nominee for the UCLA James Kirkwood Literary Prize. He is working on a collection of short stories centered around the people, places, and events in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, during the 1960s and 70s. He has written stage plays and short stories, and his one-act play Desert Oasis Garden Club was produced at Scripps Ranch Theatre’s 7th Out-on-a-Limb festival. He currently resides in Desert Hot Springs, CA.
Susan Kammeraad-Campbell is a publisher and editor-in-chief of Joggling Board Press, an independent press based in Charleston, S.C. She has been the lead editor of more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction, many of which have garnered top national awards. She is the author of Doc: The Story of Dennis Littky and His Fight for a Better School, a nonfiction novel based on a story she covered as a newspaper reporter in New England. The book became an NBC movie called A Torn Apart. She is the coauthor of Edisto River: Black Water Crown Jewel, winner of seven national awards including the best nonfiction book of the year by Foreword Reviews. Kammeraad-Campbell was named one of 2022’s top 50 women leaders of South Carolina by Women We Admire.
Tim Hickey is a writer from Richmond, Virginia, who lives in Washington, D.C. He is a founder and manager of Tangier Island Oyster Company, a topic he talked about at TEDxRVA. His fiction and humor pieces have appeared on newyorker.com and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Tim’s work has also been published in CRAFT Literary Magazine, among others. He is working on his first novel.
Lisa McCormack is an aspiring novelist and short-story writer from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, a small town outside Nashville, where she lives with her husband. Lisa is in her second semester of a low residency MFA program at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. Her fiction has appeared in Still: The Journal, 3rd Wednesday, and KY Stories. Her debut novel, Fast Moving Dreams, is in the hands of an agent who is searching for the perfect editor for this Southern literary story. Lisa works as a sales director for Penguin Random House. When she is not writing or working, Lisa enjoys reading, traveling, antiquing, and playing tennis.
Keri Miller is pursuing her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. She received her MFA from Florida State University. Keri is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel.
2023 Runner-Up: Arvin Ramgoolam is a 2020 One Story Adina Talve-Goodman Fellow and a 2022 MacDowell Fellow. His words have appeared in the Normal School, The Asian American Writers Workshop, and The Jellyfish Review. Arvin owns and operates Townie Books and Rumors Coffee and Tea House with his wife, Danica. Together they are raising twin girls in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
2023 Winner: Steffi Sin is a Chinese American writer from San Francisco with an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. Her work has been published in Best Small Fictions 2022, The Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, and is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review and Bennington Review. She is revising her manuscript Bird with No Legs.
2023 Runner-Up: Daniel Spiro is mostly nomadic and currently resides in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He aspires to get a dog soon.
Amy Strong is a classical flutist and former attorney who grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and now lives in Chicago. She is working on a novel, Eternity, a near-death Cinderella story set in a New Wave night club, which she hopes to begin querying this spring.
