Announcing PhotoFinish Winner & Finalists

We are happy to announce the winner, runner-up, and finalists of our PhotoFinish competition. Iron Horse Literary Review’s annual PhotoFinish is an invitation for writers to respond to a photo prompt with a well-crafted and very brief ekphrastic work that pushes beyond a literal read of the image we provide. Each year, we dedicate an entire issue to our photo prompt responses, with the winner, runner-up, and all finalists being published.

This time, we selected Aimee LaBrie’s Shadow Stories as the 2023 IHLR PhotoFinish winner. Aimee La Brie received her MFA in fiction from Pennsylvania State University in 2003. Her short story “Ducklings” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Aimee lives in Philadelphia and works at Temple University.

We chose Sean Cho A.’s Kinda Sonnet #7 for the runner-up. Sean Cho A. is the author of American Home and winner of the Autumn House Press Chapbook Prize. His work can be future found or ignored in Copper Nickel, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, and Nashville Review, among others. Sean is a graduate of the MFA program at The University of California Irvine and a Ph.D. Student at the University of Cincinnati.

Congratulations to Aimee LaBrie, Sean Cho A., and all our finalists!

Finalists:

Bosse Haley, “it was a child’s war,”

Cervenka Aimee, “Self-portrait with Drought”

Diep Mags, “Grounding”

Jewell Susan Carroll, “The Year of Living Dangerously”

Morse Oak, “Circus Burst”

Straus Adam, “In the Woods”

Thomas Noah, “Cast Figures”

Vallone Deanie, “Elska”