We are pleased to announce that Toni Jensen has selected a winner and three runners-up from a slate of finalists. See the full list below. All entrants will receive a copy of the Fall 2024 issue of North American Review in which the winner will appear. A big thank you to everyone who submitted an essay for the prize. We had 311 entries, and it was a pleasure to read such an abundance of fine nonfiction.
WINNER
Sophie Collins Arroyo, “What Salitre Can't Touch”
RUNNERS-UP
Lynette Vialet, “Chimeras”
Madeline Spivey, “Nostalgic Objects”
Julian Jackson, “Another Life”
FINALISTS
Yvonne Conza, "Like His Life"
Angie Romines, "Gone for a Spell"
Shane Nielson, “Chasing Goffman”
Avery Perkins, “Bloody Mary”
Shifra Sharlin, “Lopsided”
Esther Ra, “The Consolations of Snow”
Emily Mathis, “Men Smoking”
SEMIFINALISTS
Rebecca Williams, "A Song for the Dammed"
Lizbeth Barcena, “Bound by Faults”
Frankie Concepcion, “Origin Stories”
Sarah Platenius, “Reassembly”
Eleanor Whitney, “The Desert House”
Carol Leigh Wehking, “Charlotte's Quilts”
Liz Domenech, “Holding the Gaze”
Kirk Astroth, “Life and Death on Cemetery Hill”
Annalisa Bolin, “The Bones of the Ocean”
J Eric Miller, “All Awe”
Katherine Larson, “Monarchs: The Art of Grieving”
Julie Marie Wade, “Meditation 44: A Mobius Strip”
Anne Kenner, “Backtalk”
Jeremy Faro, “Half-Heard in the Stillness”
Candice Reffe, “Pay Dirt”
Jodie Vinson, “Survival of the Unfit: A Retrospective”
Jenn Dean, “The Supermodels”
Colette Labouff, “Woodshed”
Susan Mosakowski, “LaGuardia and Bleecker Street”
TONI JENSEN’s Carry is a memoir-in-essays about gun violence, land and Indigenous women’s lives (Ballantine 2020). An NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient in 2020, Jensen's essays have appeared in Orion, Catapult and Ecotone. She is also the author of the short story collection From the Hilltop. She teaches at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is Métis.