Negative Space Challenge Winners

For Negative Space, we asked writers to explore how much can be said through what's left out. Our favorite entries found clever ways to make those silences, gaps, and unanswered questions feel just as important as the words themselves.

🏆 Grand Prize

Room Only by Iris Obscura

At the start of Room Only, Iris gives her name without hesitation. By the end, that same question is met with silence. Through nothing but fragments of conversation, she shows us a woman slowly disappearing from her own story.

🎖️ Winners

Condiment by Cali Loria

Cali Loria makes something as ordinary as preparing a sandwich feel deeply unsettling. The broken-up words and small, uncomfortable details suggest there's much more going on than the speaker is willing to say.

Start to Finish by Stephen Kramer Avitabile

Stephen Kramer Avitabile keeps the jokes coming, but those solitary periods make it painfully clear just how badly the speaker needs someone to answer.

Between Heartbeats by Sean A.

Old photos, a single letter on a screen, and a dinner table with no empty seats make the distance between parent and child painfully real, while still leaving open the possibility of a return.

tonal dropout by ali

ali gradually fades from her own photographs as the words on the page begin to break apart, turning the feeling of losing yourself into something you can actually see.

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• what isn't there by Shelby Larsen

• let there be nothing by Sonia Heidi Unruh

• Memory Foam by Bride of Sound

• double negatives; or, collected thoughts on optimism by Tyler Clark

• Just Minutes Before by Gerry Thibeault

• Scrambled by Julie Lacksonen

• The Dust by Caitlin Mitchell

• 'til the last one falls by Heather Hubler

• e__n---o__u---g__h by Rowan Finley

• The Shape of Solitude by Natalie Wilkinson