From Bethesda Magazine: A way with words
The short stories and essays that took the top prizes in our annual writing competition
By Staff
June 26, 2026 9:00 a.m. | Updated: June 24, 2026 3:16 p.m.
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Bethesda Magazine and the Bethesda Urban Partnership sponsored the 2026 Short Story & Essay Contest for local writers. The judges pored over 165 short stories and 217 essays to select the winners, who were recognized at a ceremony at The Bethesdan Hotel in Bethesda in March. First-, second- and third-place writers in the contest and honorable mentions were awarded cash prizes ranging from $50 to $500.
Adult Short Story Contest
First place: “Past Tense” by Michael Norton, Silver Spring
Second place: “Emerging from the Cold” by Aniko Albert, Rockville
Third place: “Squirrel Justice” by Sarah Boone, Silver Spring
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Honorable mention: “The Moment that Missed Him” by Erica Clark, Silver Spring
Honorable mention: “The Last Gift” by Bob Greenberg, Bethesda
Honorable mention: “The Weeping” by Naomi Walker, Silver Spring
High School Short Story Contest
First place: “Rye” by Ainsley MacSlarrow, Winston Churchill High School
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Second place: “Corydalis” by Midori Golike, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
Third place: “Living in C” by Sean Carvin, James Hubert Blake High School
Honorable mention: “Hand in Hand” by Rey Landoll, Richard Montgomery High School
Honorable mention: “What the Vein Takes” by Leah DMello, Bullis School
Honorable mention: “Winner Sold Here” by Evie Hall, Richard Montgomery High School
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Adult Essay Contest
First place: “I’m Greedy” by Joyce B. Siegel, North Bethesda
Second place: “Love in the Time of Alzheimer’s” by Kristin O’Keefe, Kensington
Third place: “A Small Visitor” by Diego Tovar, Chevy Chase
Honorable mention: “The Harvest” by Holly Mason Badra, Clifton, Virginia
Honorable mention: “Keeping Vigil at the Party” by Joy Einstein, Bethesda
Honorable mention: “Packing Up Patan: The Weight of Memory” by Tara Prakash, Chevy Chase
High School Essay Contest
First place: “The Weight On the Bench” by Nolan Chen, Poolesville High School
Second place: “The Woman Called Mom” by Nila Amin, Walter Johnson High School
Third place: “Half and Whole” by Annabel Taylor, Walt Whitman High School
Honorable mention: “The Sheep” by Abigail Araya, Thomas S. Wootton High School
Honorable mention: “The Stage Between Worlds” by Andrea Chen, Thomas S. Wootton High School
Honorable mention: “Glacial Rebound” by Cooper Gregg, Walt Whitman HS, Honorable Mention
Honorable mention: “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” by Anesu Pimhidzai, Winston Churchill High School
Adult Short Story Judges
Jim Beane is a fiction writer whose stories have appeared in numerous online and print literary journals and the anthologies DC Noir and Workers Write: Tales from the Construction Site. He is the winner of the 2017 Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing and his work has appeared in O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal for the Veterans Writing Project. He has published a fiction chapbook, By the Sea, By the Sea…He owes much to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Jim is a native Washingtonian and lives in West Friendship, Maryland.
Caroline Bock is the author of the new novel, The Other Beautiful People, a workplace love story inspired by her two-decade career at AMC, Bravo, IFC and IFC Films. She is also the author of the young adult novels Lie and Before My Eyes, as well as the short story collection Carry Her Home. She is the co-president/prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She lives in Potomac with her family.
Sara Goodman Confino is the bestselling author of six novels: Don’t Forget to Write, Behind Every Good Man, She’s Up to No Good, For the Love of Friends, Good Grief and Off the Record. After spending more years than she’s willing to publicly admit teaching high school English and journalism, she is currently writing full time and trying to make a living off of the crazy stories in her head. She lives in Montgomery County with her husband, two sons, two miniature schnauzers and a goldfish that seems to be vying for the world record of longest living fish.
High School Short Story Judges
Jarvis Slacks is the chair of English and reading at the Rockville campus of Montgomery College. Jarvis has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing/fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. When he’s not teaching writing and working with students, he’s working on fiction projects.
Kristina Tabor is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work appears in the anthology America’s Future: Poetry & Prose in Response to Tomorrow (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2025) and several literary journals including Cease, Cows, Ghost Parachute, Fractured Lit and The Molotov Cocktail. She’s also a regular essay contributor to the Substack Wisdom of Crowds. Her debut micro-chapbook, Memory’s Ebb, was released in 2025 by ELJ Editions. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Randolph College, where she started a humorous novel—which is still in progress. She calls Washington, D.C., home.
John Wang was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and grew up in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught English to junior high, elementary and kindergarten students in Matsusaka, Japan. He has a Master of Arts degree in English/creative writing from the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and a doctorate in English literature/creative writing from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Wang’s fiction and poetry has appeared in such journals as Cimmaron Review, Quarterly West, Hobart and Barcelona Review. He resides in Darnestown.
Adult and High School Essay Judges
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection The Body Is a Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus, 2024), the book-length essay Ethan Hawke & Me (Barrelhouse, 2025) and the short story collection One Person Away From You. Bertaina has a Master of Fine Arts degree from American University.
Ariel Felton is a writer and editor with a decade of experience in feature writing, travel writing and copywriting. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Vogue, The New Yorker (Shouts & Murmurs), The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Bitter Southerner, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Savannah Magazine and more. Her essay “A Letter to My Niece,” first published in The Progressive, was listed as notable in The Best American Essays 2020.
Kerry Folan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Dickinson College and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing (nonfiction concentration) from George Mason University. She teaches composition, literature and creative writing at George Mason University. She is also the founder and director of Shore Lit, an organization that brings literary events to the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she lives.
Contest Information
Bethesda Magazine and Bethesda Urban Partnership work together to honor local writers through the short story and essay contests. Short stories are limited to 2,500 words, and authors must be residents of Montgomery County or Upper Northwest D.C. (20015 and 20016 ZIP codes). Essays are limited to 500 words and writers in the adult contest must live in Washington, D.C., or select counties of Maryland (Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard and Frederick) or Virginia (Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William); high school writers must be residents of, or attend a school in, Montgomery County or Washington, D.C.
Keep an eye out for next year’s contest details at BethesdaMagazine.com/forms/essay-and-short-story-contest.
This appears in the July/August 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine