Thanks to our guest judge:

Literary Agent Gracie Freeman Lifschutz

WOW was honored to have guest judge literary agent Gracie Freeman Lifschutz choose this season’s top winners. Thank you, Gracie, for sharing your time and efforts to make these contestants’ dreams come true!

Gracie’s bio:

Gracie Freeman Lifschutz was raised in the bustle of New York City, surrounded by all kinds of stories — from story time at her local library to musicals on Broadway. She now can’t imagine her life without either. Gracie graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in English and a minor in French. Her work in the time since has always revolved around storytelling and human connection. She joined Dystel, Goderich & Bourret after completing the Columbia Publishing Course in 2022. She currently works alongside Lauren Abramo as the Subsidiary Rights Associate. 

Gracie is interested in grounded genre fiction, upmarket romance, psychological thrillers, folk horror, book club fiction, and narrative nonfiction examining culture and social issues. Across young adult and adult categories, she’s interested in underrepresented voices, inventive storytelling, and delicious prose.

Gracie’s page at DG&B: https://www.dystel.com/gracie-freeman-lifschutz

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Rose’s Bio:

 

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Sack of Bones

By Rose Brown

 

I can’t tell if the yowling’s for the dead or the heat. A disrespectful heat, especially for October. But as Dad shovels dirt over Papa, I’m cold. Can’t cry, and it feels like sin.

“It’s alright to cry,” Aunt June whispers. “Ain’t no shame in it.”

She fans herself with a program as tears drip below her sunglasses. But I can’t put on grief like wide-brimmed hats and pearls and black dresses.

Bone-white laurels punch through the dirt like defiant little fists. My cousin stomps over their petals, a banjolele slung over his shoulder. He stops beside the gravediggers and smiles.

“For Papa,” he says, and strums. The bluegrass starts low but swings lighter, too cheery. Feet thump against dirt. A few hips sway. The song almost turns Papa’s funeral into a party, like we can’t decide whether to celebrate or sob. At least, I can’t.

I don’t hate Papa. Just never knew how to like him. War, whiskey, and whatever else made him a monster most days. But more human when he told stories.

Last time I saw Papa, a few months before he died, he slumped in that ugly olive recliner, its guts spilling out the side. Aunt June told me Papa had been phoning friends about how his grandkid got into college, akin to an Olympic gold medal in our small town. So he hugged me when he saw me and stuck a cigar in my palm, even though he always said smokes weren’t for girls.

We rocked on the porch and talked, smoking as the sky turned from gold to dusky purple. Fireflies sparked in the weeds. Papa slapped his knee when I told him how I aced my first exam, but his smile faded quickly.

“There’s a spirit in these woods,” Papa said. He told me the legend of a lost soul who whistles past the willows, near graves. He carries the bones of his father in a sack over his shoulder.

“He just keeps walkin’, bones clackin’ like ice in a cup, lookin’ for a place to lay it down. But never does.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Papa scratched his beard. “Some things can’t be put away, no matter how hard ya try.” He went quiet for a moment, then shouted at June to bring him a beer. She took too long. When she finally handed it over, he tossed it at her and shattered it against the brick, just shy of her head.

Papa asked if I’d come back soon. I said maybe, but lied. To him, women were maids and half-brains. But even my half a brain knew to get out before he made me into June.

Now, past the freshly buried casket and teary crowd, willow trees line the graveyard. A brief gust makes the boughs drift slow and ghost-like as Papa’s voice, his tale, echo in my head. But I don’t see a spirit by the willows. Just Dad standing stiff, shoulders tight. No ghostly whistle, only sniffles and wailing from the people Papa hurt most.

Everyone shuffles back through the grass, to a narrow path leading to the church. It’s almost done: the condolences, the platitudes, the eulogy that masked the true man.

I walk beside Dad, no noise except the crunch of gravel beneath our feet. Sun touches the gnarled scar on his arm, from when Papa burned him with a lighter for “stealing” a pack of gum as a toddler.

“Think you'll miss him?” I ask, even though the question feels wicked.

“I’ll miss who he coulda been,” he says.

I squeeze my hands together tight. Dad’s never been good with feelings. Neither have I. But if I’d been raised by Papa, never told I was loved, hit instead of held, I’d be worse. I got scraps, but Dad got starved.

He looks like he wants to say more, but sighs, yanks out a cigarette and marches to a willow. He leans against a trunk, folds his arms, and whistles.

A tear burns down my cheek. Maybe flesh beats behind my chest instead of granite after all. But I don’t cry for Papa. I cry for Dad. Just ‘cause you bury a man doesn’t mean the hurt goes down with him.

If Papa were here, what story would he tell? I’ll never know, and maybe that’s best. As Dad finishes his smoke, I head for the church. My tears are already dry as I walk on, quietly carrying his bones.

***

What Rose Won:

• $400.00 Cash Prize
• $25 Amazon Gift Card
• Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
• Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin

Bianca’s Bio:

Bianca Jones is a library assistant, developmental editor, and fiction writer represented by Leah Pierre of Ladderbird Literary Agency. She writes sweet young adult romance and dark, unsettling horror…and she would love to combine the two one day. You can find her on X (formerly Twitter) at BJOwrites.

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A Forgiveness of Crows

By Bianca Jones

 

My grandfather, Arthur Ray Jackson, was a boy of eight in 1948 when he killed the crow. Walking down his dirt-lined road in his North Carolina town, he came across the silken, black-feathered thing in a small ditch on his left side and was overcome with a bewildering urge to grab it by its neck and swung it ‘round the way his mama and grandmama would to snap a chicken’s neck for supper.

Stunned by what he’d done and disgusted at the mess of feathers and pinpricks of blood on his palms, he dropped the crow, the thud of its lifeless little body muted by the clover below. Its doll-like eye stared up at him. 

Much later, he explained that he’d become enraged thinking of the laws that terrorized Blacks across the South, that the bird had symbolized Jumpin’ Jim Crow, the minstrel show and character after which the laws were apparently named. 

Granddad grew up, met Nana, and just over eleven months after my dad was born, Granddad was killed. His car was found on the side of a backroad, the driver’s door wide open, the car still running. He was laid out in the ditch beside it, a tinge of horror in his wide eyes, as if he’d died in a fit of disbelief. 

Shortly before my first birthday, as Mom sat on the couch with me on her lap, watching Dad walk toward the house from the driveway after a long day of work, she saw him flinch, grab his head, and look upward. Her confusion turned to bewilderment, then panic, then horror, as dark objects began raining from a point she couldn’t see in the sky. Dad began screaming, flailing, and running sideways to get out of the way. Mom yelled at my dad through the window to take cover and hold on, and she ran to put me in my Pack-n-Play to keep me safe. 

By the time she made it outside, Dad was lying in the middle of the lawn, surrounded by smallish objects, mostly bits of asphalt that had crumbled off the road. Dad’s skull was cracked and bleeding in some spots, and there were contusions forming in others. All headshots. Mom’s cries of anguish were accompanied only by the fading sounds of crows’ caws as they flew away.

When I got married, she told me about Granddad, Dad’s dad, about the rumors surrounding his death that mirrored that of the crow he confessed to killing as a boy, whispers that got louder when my dad was then killed by a murder of the same bird. I wasn’t paranoid about any of it until the day I found myself in my front yard with my one-year-old son. 

It was evening in the early summertime, and my grass was tall, and I was looking at some plants in the flower bed, deciding what would need watering along with the mowing. I heard the flapping wings, but nothing registered until I heard that unmistakable caw, and I yelped and ducked instinctively before my motherly instincts took over and I whipped my head about, trying to lay eyes on my son. 

I found him toddling on chubby legs toward a spot in the middle of the yard. I exhaled and began walking toward him, but I stopped when I saw that he’d approached a crow. An abrupt sense of cellular dread flooded my body from my core to my extremities. 

“Art,” I called my son’s name, though my voice was thin. “Arthur.”

He babbled, then extended his arm toward the crow, as if to pet it. I saw something glitter in his hand: a shiny candy wrapper. The crow cocked its inky head one way, then another, then gently craned its neck toward my son’s hand, took the glittering thing in its beak, and then hopped a couple paces to the side. 

It looked at me. I swear, we locked eyes for several long moments. It was like looking into the face of a human.

And then it flew away.

Over the next week, Arthur and I were in the yard every evening. And every evening, a crow, the crow, would visit. Art would hand it something shiny, like a coin from his great-grandfather’s collection, or a piece of foil, and the crow would fly away with its treasure. The transaction was seemingly completed after seven days, and I didn’t see the crow again. 

It seemed the Jacksons had finally paid for their transgressions in full.

 

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What Bianca Won:

• $300.00 Cash Prize
• $25 Amazon Gift Card
• Publication of winning story on WOW-WomenOnWriting.com website
• Interview on WOW!’s blog The Muffin

Elizabeth’s Bio:

RUNNERS UP: