We are thrilled to announce the winners of this year’s Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize, judged by Eric Puchner. We consider it our privilege to have spent time with so many terrific submissions—thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. Congratulations to the winners!
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First-Place Prize:
“The Woman” by Jana Horn
Judge Eric Puchner writes, “This emotionally insightful story about a woman who goes on a camping trip with her boyfriend and his daughter, who’s been mysteriously kicked out of summer camp, is clear-eyed and surprising and written with a spare, evocative, dreamlike precision that reminded me a bit of early Joy Williams. It captivated me from beginning to end.”
Jana Horn is a writer and musician from Texas, with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Second-Place Prize:
“Live Better (Terms Apply)” by Aziza Kasumov
And of Aziza Kasumov’s story, Eric Puchner says, “Highy inventive, this story about a family of Soviet emigrants from ‘Kareningrad’ living in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is the best story I’ve ever read about Walmart fandom and the dietary benefits of eating glitter. It’s so funny and original that you almost don’t notice its true subject: the incremental loss of home.”
Aziza Kasumov (b. 1995) is a writer and translator originally from Germany and now based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Henfield Prize and taught in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Department. Her journalistic writing has appeared in the Financial Times, Vice, Bloomberg News, Politico, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, and others, and her translation work was published in World Literature Today. Her fiction has appeared in Driftwood Press. She was a 2024 Oxbelly fellow in fiction and is presently at work on her first novel.
About Eric Puchner
Eric Puchner is the author of four books, including the new novel Dream State, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a New York Times bestseller, and the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, McSweeney’s, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories 2012 and 2017. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.
Our deepest thanks to Eric Puchner for judging, to The Burdine Johnson Foundation and the Tasajillo Residency for their generous support of this contest, and to all of you for submitting your stories. And congrats to the winners!