We're proud to announce the winners of our first-ever fiction and poetry contest:

Poetry
1st Place: Becky Cooper, "This is What I Know"
2nd Place: Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, "goat song"
3rd Place: Joanne Lowery, "Worry, the Giraffe"

Fiction
1st Place: Alika Tanaka, San Francisco, CA: “S”
2nd Place: Dave Housley, Wheaton, MD: “On Sunday Will Be Clown”
3rd Place: Julia Ridley Smith, Roxobel, NC: “The Ugly Cousin”

The winning stories and poems will be published in Backwards City Review #2, which comes out this summer. Order yours today.

We'd also like to acknowledge our finalists and semifinalists, who made us regretful we could choose only three:

Poetry Finalists and Semifinalists
Eric Amling, "Madam, I'm Atom"
Jill Beauchesne, "Almanac"
Rupert Fike, "At the Art Brut Show"
Anna Fulford, "A Bird in the Hand is Worth $1.50/hr"
Marty Hebrank, "Sadly to the Marrow"
Armine Iknadossian, "The Return"
Chad Parenteau, "The Dead Won't Stop Moving"
Lynne Potts, "Whole Worlds Had Already Happened"

Fiction Finalists and Semifinalists
Jacob Appel, New York, NY: “Sand Castles”
Sarah Blackman, Tuscaloosa, AL: “We Can Be Jack and Sally”
Timothy Croft, Tuscaloosa, AL: “Unlike Cheoung Ek”
Lisa DeCook, Bowling Green, OH: “Andy or Just a Few of the Things That Could Have Happened Instead”
Christopher Harris, Amherst, MA: “The Astonishing Adventures of the Redeemer”
Teague Whalen, Harbor Springs, MI: “Drivin’ Up to Denver”
Jennifer Witt, Elon, NC: “Confidence”

Thanks and congratulations to all entrants. The quality of work we received was truly beyond our expectations and it certainly made ours and Fred's job beyond difficult.

Stay tuned for the details of our second-ever contest!