By Erin Binney / Nonfiction / A family of seasonal wreaths has taken over my childhood home. They alternate which ones greet visitors at the front door, hang over the living room fireplace, and perch above the toilet, adorned with doodads and whirlygigs indicative of various holidays and times of year. Meanwhile, the dozens waiting to be called into service lie about the house in various states of repose, like passed-out frat brothers the morning after a party. These wreat

By Kira Santana / Nonfiction / In the rainy blitz of a March afternoon, I walk into The Museum of Modern Art in Midtown, Manhattan, with my blue wounds and my leather boots full of grief. A new exhibit, “Frida and Diego: The Last Dream,” has just opened, and my heart thrashes in my chest like a wild infant, hoping that a face-to-face with Frida Kahlo’s art can somehow return me to myself. In the dead cold of winter, I become very quiet and mistake my loneliness for the suspe

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 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 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

By Sarah Safsten / Nonfiction / It was rush hour in Seoul on May 28, 2016, and at Guui subway station, a platform screen door was broken. At 4:58pm, the subway manager started a work order, promising the door would be fixed within the hour. At 4:58pm, the clock started ticking. Mr. Kim and Mr. Jeong(1) were the technicians assigned to repair the door. At 5:20 p.m., Mr. Kim was 30 minutes away from Guui Station. Mr. Jeong, 50 minutes out, lagged behind. 38 minutes left.

By Jacob Hibbard / Nonfiction / By way of an industrial kitchen, they do. On the surface of a green cutting board, with a pile of diced onions, in this plastic bin of mirepoix—they grow up. At a faraway truckstop, in the Brooks Mountain Range, as a Piper Navajo lands, beside the Koyukuk river for the first time. And through wet/dry mop technique taught by the truckstop owner who calls days off, personal mission days , believing there is no rest from our living. In stom

By Isaiah Lewis / Nonfiction / When I first read Simone Weil in seminary, I knew that she was autistic. Not in any formal diagnostic sense, of course—the term “autism” to describe a constellation of neurodevelopmental features was coined in 1943, the year Weil died. Nevertheless, the way she talks about attention as prayer, her fierce sense of justice, her hatred of being touched, her voice, her clumsiness, her fearless quests for purity and truth—I didn’t know that I wa

By Holly Aszkenasy / Nonfiction / i. What is insomnia? Insomnia is boring. Dull to hear about and even more tedious to experience. It’s searching “where is joss stone now” at 3 a.m. (filming Instagram Stories about baking, is where, crooning softly to the camera Isn’t this delicious? as she fingers a tray of vegan peanut butter brownies) and nervy, aching teeth, and the desire the following day to consume more fistfuls of sugary fruit than a fully grown bonobo. It’s fiel

By Melissa Ferrer Civil / Nonfiction / “We talk about the black problem. It might be interesting to see what would happen to the page if one decided to discuss the white problem.“ – James Baldwin in conversation with John Callaway on “Chicago Tonight,” 1985 Dear Whiteness , This morning I was dancing with my white roommate in the kitchen. He was showing me one of his favorite songs. In it, the white men are screaming that the revolution has died. And I said somethin

By Mansi Dahal / Nonfiction / “What versions of yourself lived in that home that never lived anywhere else?” The writing prompt hangs in the air as I doodle in my off white notebook, feeling exposed in a classroom of fifty. My mind tells me I can't write here, fearing that my grip on the pen betrays my unresolved heartaches and my clumsiness—the mango juice on my flowery dress, nail polish on my beige romper, tteok-bokki on my parallel pants. Each time I tell myself,

By Amber Wong / Nonfiction / The April air’s crisp as a Granny Smith, the water smooth as velvet. Shades of coral edge over the eastern horizon, the promise of a sunny spring day. At the top of the University of Washington crew racecourse on the edge of Lake Washington, my eyes sweep the skyline, north to south, hoping for a sweet reward. And there it is. Today, beyond the dark evergreen nests of firs, the blue-gray jags of the distant Cascade Mountains end with an e

By Zainab Omaki / Nonfiction / Technically, I did meet you. I have a picture of you holding me as a baby at some sort of party. You are in a bright orange skirt suit, bathed in the glitter of lights under a sky of darkness. Your hair is a gloriously coiffed jheri curl, your long legs tucked under you on a pool chair, the water in mid-ripple beside you. And your lips, your ostentatiously purple lips, your stunningly purple lips, are spread out in a smile that knows no

By Ann Calandro / Nonfiction / In July and August we stayed with my mother’s parents in their white summer house with green shutters, fifty miles west of the city. The house had four small bedrooms, one bathroom, five acres of weedy grass, and a large kitchen in which my grandmother Evelyn baked bread and pies, made jam, and canned fruit. Outside smelled like lilacs, planted by a previous owner. Inside smelled like burning sugar. The summer I was nine, my father wen

By T.J. Jourian / Nonfiction / I’m not sure what to make of this group yet. It’s my first time meeting these dozen or so he/hims and they/thems, some with names I recognize from seeing them in my inbox every so often on a listserv for the Masculinity Action Project. We are sitting in a circle in a… well, looking around, I actually can’t tell what this room is normally used for. There are seven or eight overflowing bookshelves across three walls, a small kitchen in

By Shella Parcarey / Nonfiction / One day after my tenth birthday, I stuffed a suitcase with nearly all my clothes. Underneath...

By Greta McGee / Nonfiction / On September 27, 2024, my uterus is removed from my body. I shall be unconscious the entire time,...

By Amna Tariq Shah-Kemp / Nonfiction / It began with a cough. My husband, Dylan, an Australian, whose heart belonged as much to...

By Kristina Kasparian / Second Place, 2025 Plentitudes Prize in Nonfiction / The stench clings to the flickering neon...

By Shantanu M / Third Place, 2025 Plentitudes Prize in Nonfiction / The cement tile on the threshold of my old house would...

By Josina Manu Maltzman / First Place, 2025 Plentitudes Prize in Nonfiction / We arrive late, a little after 6am, and...