by Kelly Link
Everyone went home on sore feet and felt partly responsible for making the wedding such a success.
That part had been quite easy, Anu thought ruefully, watching the last of their guests trickle out in the small hours as her husband helped her into the back of their private car. She had been watching him all that evening, as if they were characters on a reality show where she already knew the outcome. He spoke fondly about how they met and looked at her now and again with half-hooded eyes that she supposed were meant to denote affection, one hand tucked into hers or wrapped firmly around her waist, nestling her against his side.
It was hard not to feel anything during the ceremony or reception, harder than she thought to look the bishop in the eye and lie, say the vows they’d decided on via email three nights before, copying lines from various websites. He kissed her twice during the reception, for pictures and such. His mouth was warm, soft; she felt the hint of scratchiness about the chin.
She was glad, she realized with the violent thrill of a conquest she had no right to make. She was glad she knew about his wife. It would spare her the pressure of being his ideal.
“Good job,” he said into her ear when they were settled in the back of the car that would take her to her new life. She nodded, unable to speak through a sudden pressure in her throat. James fell asleep soon after their departure, lulled by the car’s gentle rhythm. The heat radiating off his chest made her drowsy, but she did not sleep. Instead, she watched the driver. He’d opened the windows and it was misting outside, a warm faint imitation of rain. The man sang quietly to himself, free hand dangling out the window. Anu wondered idly if the defogger was broken, or if he enjoyed the coolness of the mist on his fingertips and face after a day trapped in the small, hot prison.
______________
Grace Oluseyi is a writer and a book history scholar who divides her time in work and study between London, New York, and the Middle East.
About the judges
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novel 2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas and the story collection Safe as Houses. Her work has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and fellowships from the Center for Fiction and the Sewanee, MacDowell, and Hedgebrook writers colonies. In fall 2017, she will be the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She teaches at New York University and in the low-residency MFA program at Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and lives in Brooklyn, where she is an editor at large for Catapult.
Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble, which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, have coedited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Nina McConigley is the author of the story collection Cowboys and East Indians, which won a 2014 PEN Open Book Award. She was born in Singapore and grew up in Wyoming. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston, where she was an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow. She also holds an MA in English from the University of Wyoming and a BA in literature from Saint Olaf College. She currently serves on the board of the Wyoming Arts Council. She teaches at the University of Wyoming.
About
the PEN/Robert J. Dau
Short Story Prize
for Emerging Writers
The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers recognizes twelve fiction writers for a debut short story published in a print or online literary magazine. The annual award was offered for the first time during PEN’s 2017 awards cycle.
The twelve winning stories are selected by a committee of three judges. Each writer receives a $2,000 cash prize and is honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards Ceremony in New York City. Every year, Catapult will publish the prize stories in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories.
This award is generously supported by the family of the late Robert J. Dau, whose commitment to the literary arts has made him a fitting namesake for this career-launching prize. Mr. Dau was born and raised in Petoskey, a city in northern Michigan in close proximity to Walloon Lake where Ernest Hemingway had spent his summers as a young boy and which serves as the backdrop for Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring. Petoskey is also known for being where Hemingway determined that he would commit to becoming a writer. This proximity to literary history ignited the Dau family’s interest in promoting emerging voices in fiction and spotlighting the next great American fiction writer.
PEN America and Catapult gratefully acknowledge the following journals, which published debut fiction in 2016 and submitted work for consideration to the inaugural edition of the PEN/
Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize.
1:1000
The Scythe Prize
805 Lit + Art
A Public Space
The Adroit Journal
Aliterate
The Asian American Literary Review
Baltimore Review
Barrelhouse
Bellevue Literary Review
Bennington Review
Black Candies
Blackbird
Boston Review
Boulevard
The Caribbean Writer
Carve Magazine
Catamaran Literary Reader
Chicago Literati
Chicago Quarterly Review
Cleaver Magazine
Commentary
The Common
Conjunctions
Consequence Magazine
Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
Epiphany
Exposition Review
The Flash Fiction Press
F(r)iction
Fence
Fields
Fifth Wednesday Journal
Four Way Review
The Gettysburg Review
Glimmer Train
The Gravity of the Thing
Great Jones Street
Harvard Review
The Healing Muse
Hyphen
The Iowa Review
Isthmus
Joyland
Juked
Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal
Kelsey Review
Kenyon Review
Kweli
LA Fiction Anthology
Little Fiction | Big Truths
Louisiana Literature
The Maine Review
The Malahat Review
The Massachusetts Review
The Masters Review
The Missouri Review
The Moth
New England Review
New Ohio Review
New South
Newtown Literary
NOON
North American Review
North Dakota Quarterly
One Story
One Teen Story
The Paris Review
Philadelphia Stories
Ploughshares
Prime Number Magazine
Pulse: The Literary Magazine of Lamar University
Queen Mob’s Tea House
The Rumpus
The Seventh Wave
Slice
SmokeLong Quarterly
The Southampton Review
The Southern Review
Southwest Review
sPARKLE & bLINK
STORGY
Subtrop
ics
The Summerset Review
The Sun
Sycamore Review
The Threepenny Review
The Tishman Review
The Toast
Tin House
Tupelo Quarterly
Waccamaw
Washington Square Review
The White Review
ZYZZYVA
permissions
“Galina” by Angela Ajayi. First published in Fifth Wednesday Journal, November 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Angela Ajayi. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Handler” by Amber Caron. First published in Southwest Review, July 15, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Amber Caron. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Tell Me, Please” by Emily Chammah. First published in The Common, October 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Emily Chammah. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Asphodel Meadow” by Jim Cole. First published in The Summerset Review, September 15, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Jim Cole. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Solee” by Crystal Hana Kim. First published in The Southern Review, January 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Crystal Hana Kim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Manual Alphabet” by Samuel Clare Knights. First published in Fence, Winter 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Samuel Clare Knights. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Goldhawk” by Katherine Magyarody. First published in The Malahat Review, Spring 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Katherine Magyarody. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“A Modern Marriage” by Grace Oluseyi. First published in Boston Review, March 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Grace Oluseyi. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“1,000-Year-Old Ghosts” by Laura Chow Reeve. First published in Hyphen, June 22, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Laura Chow Reeve. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“State Facts for the New Age” by Amy Sauber. First published in The Rumpus, September 2, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Amy Sauber. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“A Message” by Ruth Serven. First published in Epiphany, December 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Ruth Serven. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Edwin Chase of Nantucket” by Ben Shattuck. First published in Harvard Review, October 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Ben Shattuck. Reprinted by permission of the author.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. The organization champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
pen.org