THE INAUGURAL GLINT STUDENT CONTEST
INTRODUCTION
Glint Literary Journal began as a student-inspired publication, so it seems fitting that this issue includes winning entries from its first student contest. Announcements about the contest went out to students through Fayetteville State University’s campus news in March of 2013. Student entrants could submit one entry per category for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and up to three pieces of visual art. Eight judges were recruited from faculty and alumni—two per category—to blind review the students’ work.
Each of these student winners seems to have captured moments at a threshold, people on the edge. The narrator of April Love’s short story, “The Brave Ones,” is on the brink of an intoxicating romance. Love captures the voice of a young college student at times with cleverness (“All she said was ‘I see,’ but not in the way the doctor says it when his prognosis has been confirmed and you have appendicitis, but in the okay, chill out, you’re a little too excited kind of way.”) and at times with poignancy (“I wanted to be high again. I wanted to lie in my bed with Lux next to me while we talked about poems and changing the world and I wanted to smell her lavender hair.”) Cameron Bass’ winning nonfiction entry, “How I Failed to Grasp My Grandmother’s Death,” is a meditation on belated loss. Bass’ prose is rich with visceral descriptions, such as that of the ICU, with its stink of “bleach and impending death.” Through the lens of the visual arts winner, Victor G. Sanchez, we see a ballerina’s feet elegantly poised along the edge of contrasting brick that reveals her shadow-partner. Finally, the speaker of Ashley Santos’ winning poetry entry, “Time Rumba,” is also a dancer of sorts in an ominous rumba, reluctantly partnering the ticking clock.
We offer congratulations to these talented students, and look forward to the contest’s second year.
Sonya C. Brown, Contest Coordinator
WINNERS
Visual Art: Victor Gabriel Sanchez “Shadow Dancer” (above)
Creative Nonfiction: Cameron Bass “How I Failed to Grasp My Grandmother’s Death”
Fiction: April Love “The Brave Ones”
Poetry: Ashley Santos “Time Rumba”
Glint Literary Journal 