You Are Here Challenge Winners

For You Are Here, we asked writers to put readers somewhere they weren't supposed to be. What really stood out in the stories that placed was how often that line wasn't so clear. Sometimes you knew you were pushing your luck, sometimes you had every right to be there, and sometimes you didn't get much of a choice. Writing in second person made those situations feel a lot harder to watch from the sidelines.

🏆 Grand Prize

The movie and the smoke by Ella Arjmand

Ella Arjmand sends you to the movies, secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of the protests outside. Before long, you're in the crowd yourself, scared, borrowing your friend's sneakers, and still not quite ready to leave. Even when the stakes are this high, it's funny what still manages to matter.

🎖️ Winners

The Other by M.C. Finch

M.C. Finch puts you in the expensive heels of a mistress who has no business attending her married lover's funeral. The jokes about money keep coming, even as you find yourself face-to-face with his unsuspecting family.

Open House by Harper Lewis

Harper Lewis gets you so caught up in revisiting your childhood home that prying up the floorboards in someone else's closet starts to seem perfectly reasonable.

The Rover by Steven Christopher McKnight

Steven Christopher McKnight strands you on Mars in a body humans have rebuilt piece by piece. And even after everything they've put you through, you still want one of them to call your name.

Trompe-l'œil by River and Celia in Underland

River and Celia sit you down for a portrait, then let the painter erase you a little at a time. First your scar, then your calluses, until the person on the canvas barely feels like you.

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• Burden borne by Joe O’Connor

• Blameless in a mad world by Lamar Wiggins

• Good Girls Don't Pay for Coffee by Sasha Desideri

• 23,725 Days by Canute Limarider

• Mary & Mary & by Kera Hollow

• The Pink Gallery by Silver Daux

• From Regolith by Gina C.

• Fibonacci’s Furniture Flea by Amos Glade

• Raw Bar by Glenn Brown

• How to Eat Stone Soup by Kate Baggott