By Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas / First Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Fiction / At the Helpline, they said I could use any name I liked. I chose Pat because of its shape; squat and compact, and easy to make out through a crackling phone line. None of the callers got mixed up about Pat, not like my real name. What’s that again? They’d ask, and I’d spell. S as in salute. E as in everything. N as in Nancy. Sometimes they’d get confused, especially the older ones, and just start

By Lynne Sherbondy / First Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Flash / Combustion—the process of burning something; a chemical reaction that occurs between a fuel and an oxidizing agent. It started on a hot summer night at a party I didn’t really want to go to. I hated these parties. They always started late. They were always in someone’s cramped condo on the other side of town. This one—another send-off for yet another one of us in our early twenties bound for NYC, deter

By Sophia Khan / First Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Nonfiction / I Terminal velocity is the maximum speed a body can attain as it falls through air. The terminal velocity of a human is about 120 mph. Vesna Vulović is believed to have been the first person to survive a terminal velocity fall. After the bombing of JAT Flight 367 on 26 January 1972, the Serbian flight attendant fell 33,300 feet to earth. It was the little things that saved her: the snow-covered slope, the

By Lina Stoyanovich / First Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Poetry / The only real currency was knowledge of how to french-braid hair. The med-cheekers traded pills until they got caught and had to wear all red & pull weeds & be silent for weeks. There were the runaways & the fighters, the fourteen-year-old junkies detoxing in the empty cabin with the fresh-faced mormon staff, the anorexics refusing thei

By Shivani Manghnani / Second Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Fiction / The date was February 27, Shahbaz’s birthday. I’d woken up early to slap together a card with red construction paper that must have been left over from the card Shabhaz had made for me on Valentine’s Day. To the front I glued an old photograph of us as kids squatting on the shores of at Hanauma Bay, half naked and browned, our hands buried in sand. The glue was still drying and the sky still dark when I

By Michael M. Ippolito / Second Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Flash / The wheels of the train clacked against the tracks. She didn’t know if she should tell him yet. Or ever. When would be the right time? Now? In a month? In a year? Verloren. She’d heard the man at the café in Zurich say it to his friend: “Ich bin verloren.” He’d said something heavy just before that. Her German was poor, but his body language was plain enough. I am lost. When should she tell

By Carole Vasta Folley / Second Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Nonfiction / The year I turn 21 . . . I moved to Poughkeepsie to be with an older man. Might as well been the Yangtze or the deep sea, I’d have followed him anywhere. My lot was cast. My internal navigation system set on dead-reckoning for the worst possible choice. Eventually, I’d come to realize I simply traded in one soul-sucking liar for another. Fresh from quitting college and in need of cash, I met him w

By Victor Ihechiluru Unachukwu / Second Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Poetry / When a country cannot guarantee the security of life and property for residents of its federal capital, people have reasons to fear—ThisDay Newspaper. to talk about this place, this land, is to speak about fallow soil, not an aberration but an inheritance from a dead father’s tongue. for some of us floating around this poem, the only register registered is violence: the way a police officer’s ri

By Meaghan Wildes / Third Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Flash / “Hell has literally frozen over,” the weatherman says. “Well, Hell, Michigan anyway.” The weatherman grins at his own joke. You roll your eyes. The weatherman smiles like it’s funny that your town is colder than Antarctica. Like it’s funny that you can’t step foot outside your own house without potentially freezing to death in minutes. Like it’s funny that several people have died because of the cold.

By Maura Adela Cruz / Third Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Poetry / memory is a heavy pair of work boots that sieve the dirt. with turkey shit & feathers in the sole. with the guts of a scurrying roach. the blue chevy truck pulls in. tires roll in gravel & thorns with longhorn beetles & frogs. their bellies turned to the sun. my grandfather worked with bucket & brush. an old man beside big-shouldered birds, he scrubbed feeders in a hundred & nine degrees. birds tilt

By Lisa Gornick / Third Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Fiction / People often ask how I met my husband. It’s a common question, especially at weddings when marriage is on everyone’s mind and strangers are seated thigh to thigh for a four-course meal, but given how mismatched we appear, it perhaps happens more often than usual. To start, Jean Paul is French and movie star handsome and at six-foot-four hovers fourteen inches—he prefers to say 36 centimeters—over me. (If yo

By Carol Keeley / Third Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Nonfiction / People shed their coats and shoes in silence. I scan the room before choosing a seat, to avoid fidgeters. We’re here for a retreat on Judging Mind. I’m already failing. Last time, the person next to me chuckled during meditation, scribbling notes and snacking loudly. It was a struggle not to hate, because I’m the smug literalist who once let my nose run for hours in a Zendo, motionless. “The judging mind